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Table 1: Summary
| No |
Instrument |
Equity & fairness |
Benefits |
Costs |
Monitoring & enforcement |
| 1 | Ban on landfill of biodegradable municipal waste |  apparent ‘level playing field’ |
may limit diversion options |
diversion must occur everywhere regardless of cost |
difficult, require high penalties |
| 2 | Ban on landfill of specific biodegradable municipal wastes | apparent ‘level playing field’ |
may limit diversion options in long run |
diversion must occur everywhere regardless of cost |
difficult, require high penalties |
| 3 | Permits for landfill operators to accept biodegradable municipal waste or municipal waste | allows some convergence of compliance costs |
allows flexibility in diversion options |
flexibility means most diversion occurs where it costs least |
difficult but could add to existing regime |
| 4 | Landfill permits for Local Authorities (LAs)) | allows some convergence of compliance costs |
allows flexibility in diversion options |
flexibility means most diversion occurs where it costs least |
difficult but could add to existing regime |
Table A1: Options
| No | Instrument | Description/variations |
| 1 | Ban on landfill of biodegradable municipal waste | Place a duty on landfill operators to cease accepting biodegradable municipal waste (ban in place by 2006/2010). |
| 2 | Ban on landfill of specific biodegradable municipal wastes | Place a duty on landfill operators to cease accepting paper and card (ban in place by 2006/2010) and putrescible waste (ban in place before 2016/2020) from municipal sources. |
| 3 | Permits for landfill operators to accept biodegradable municipal waste | Introduce a system of issuing permits for accepting biodegradable municipal waste (or municipal waste) as an add-on to the existing system of site licenses for landfills. Allocation options include auctioning permits or grandfathering in proportion to amounts of municipal waste the site is licensed to or actually accepts or a flat amount regardless of how much municipal waste a site is licensed to or actually accepts. The permits could be tradable or non-tradable. If tradable permits are favoured, some restrictions on trades may prove desirable to prevent a situation in which a few landfill operators gain too much market power, or where there is little or no supply of biodegradable municipal waste landfill services within a given region. Permits could be valid for long periods of time with pre-set ramped reductions in the amount of waste that can be accepted, or valid for shorter periods of time and issued periodically, with the total amount of permitted waste gradually reducing over time. Whichever mechanism is favoured, safeguards may need to be put in place to avoid imposing unreasonable barriers to new entrants. |
| 4 | Landfill permits for Local Authorities (LAs) | Introduce a statutory duty for LAs to limit the amount of biodegradable municipal waste they landfill. Allocation options include auctioning permits or grandfathering in proportion to reported municipal waste arisings, estimates of arisings or variables such as population, number of households, etc. The permits could be tradable or non-tradable. Permits could be valid for long periods of time with pre-set ramped reductions in the amount of waste that can be accepted, or valid for shorter periods of time and issued periodically, with the total amount of permitted waste gradually reducing over time. |
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