Landfill Directive
When wastes may not be recycled, reused, or recovered they must be disposed of in landfills, which are defined as waste disposal sites for the deposit of waste onto or into the land. These landfills are regulated with the Council Directive 1999/31/EC of 26 April 1999 on the landfill of waste.
The Directive aims to prevent and reduce the negative effects on the environment (surface water, groundwater, soil, air) and on the human health that the landfilling of waste has on them. This pretends to be achieved by the introduction of stringent technical requirements for waste and landfills.
In this regard, the regulation defines the different categories of waste (municipal waste, hazardous waste, non-hazardous waste, and inert waste) and applies to all landfills, which according to this, are divided into three classes:
- Landfills for hazardous waste
- Landfills for non-hazardous waste
- Landfills for inert waste
In any case, all the mentioned landfills shall have a standard procedure for the acceptance of waste to avoid any risks. This procedure includes the following principles:
- Waste must be treated before being landfilled.
- Hazardous waste must be taken to a hazardous waste landfill.
- Landfills for non-hazardous waste must be used for municipal waste and for other non-hazardous waste.
- Landfill sites for inert waste must be used only for inert waste.
- Criteria for the acceptance of waste at each landfill class must be adopted by the Commission following the general principles of Annex II of the Directive.
- Some wastes may not be accepted in a landfill, such as liquid waste, flammable waste, explosive or oxidising waste, hospital and other clinical waste which is infectious, used tyres, or any other type of waste which does not meet the acceptance criteria laid down in Annex II of the Landfill Directive.
Furthermore, the Directive sets up a system of operating permits for landfill sites and determinates the information that must be given to applying for those permits. It is also established that the Member States must ensure that existing landfill sites may not continue to operate unless they comply with the provisions of the Directive.
Additionally, it is important to point that the Landfill Directive does not apply to: the spreading on the soil of sludge; the use in landfills of inert waste for redevelopment or restoration work; the deposit of unpolluted soil, or of non-hazardous inert waste resulting from prospecting and extraction, treatment and storage of mineral resources as well as from the operation of quarries; and the deposit of non-hazardous dredging sludge.
For last, it must be mentioned that on 2 July 2014, the European Commission adopted a legislative proposal to review waste-related targets in the Landfill Directive as well as recycling and other waste-related targets in Directive 2008/98/EC on waste and Directive 94/62/EC on Packaging and Packaging Waste. The proposal aims at phasing out landfilling by 2025 for recyclable waste (including plastics, paper, metals, glass, and bio-waste) in non-hazardous waste landfills, corresponding to a maximum landfilling rate of 25%.
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