2. Issues and Challenges

This chapter sets out the issues and challenges for dealing with the waste we produce and how it will be managed in the future. Despite the growing trend towards reducing and recycling waste, the overall volume of waste (known as arisings) is still expected to increase over the next 15 years in the plan area due to mainly social and economic factors, such as increasing population and household numbers (i.e. more single person households), construction of new homes and premises for businesses and industry, rising prosperity and changing lifestyles (i.e. work-home balance).

Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham have been identified as major growth areas where significant regeneration and investment will take place over the plan period¹⁰. Ambitious plans are well underway to regenerate these areas and facilitate their growth through the city region investment programme and renaissance towns initiative. Each borough's development plan provides a framework to ensure that sufficient infrastructure is put in place to support future growth needs and regeneration across the plan area. This includes the provision of new waste management facilities¹¹.

¹⁰ This long term growth strategy is based on the results of various spatial studies, including the South Yorkshire Spatial Strategy and Sheffield City Region Transport Strategy. Each borough's Core Strategy sets out the overall approach to delivering growth and regeneration in their area during the plan period.

¹¹ These projections take into account a number of modelling assumptions about economic and social change, such as economic growth rates, population change, household formation and the impact of waste minimisation strategies. These figures provide a benchmark for assessing capacity needs and will be updated and refined through regular monitoring and joint working between councils, waste operators and statutory agencies (e.g. Environment Agency) across the region (see chapter 3).

The box below sets out the different waste streams that need to be managed within the plan area.

The tables in this chapter provide information on current and future waste arisings within Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham and estimate how many new facilities are required to meet future capacity requirements and targets over the period to 2026¹². In calculating the figures for municipal, commercial and industrial waste, we have made the two assumptions set out below.

• Not all facilities will operate at full capacity all the time. We have therefore used estimated throughput (i.e. how much waste is actually managed through a facility) as a basis for calculating existing capacity.
• Of the waste that is sent for processing, not all will be successfully diverted from landfill. We have therefore allowed for a proportion of the waste sent for processing to be subsequently landfilled as residues or rejects.

¹² While the figures for municipal, commercial and industrial waste are calculated separately, in reality many facilities are at a combination of these waste streams. The conclusions in this section therefore set out the total combined municipal, commercial and industrial waste capacity required.

The implications of the above is that processing capacity will need to be higher than the actual amount of waste requiring processing and that the amount of waste that will need to be processed will be higher than the actual amount of waste that we are seeking to divert from landfill.

Local councils (as waste disposal authorities) have a legal duty to collect, recycle and treat municipal waste and must allocate sufficient land to meet capacity needs over the plan period. Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham currently produce approximately 400,000 tonnes of municipal waste each year and this is predicted to increase at less than 1% per year.

We must make provision to increase the overall amount of municipal waste which is diverted from landfill, whilst also ensuring that the statutory targets for recycling/composting the household waste element are met.

Table 1: Household waste recycling and composting capacity requirements in Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham taking into account current capacity (thousand tonnes per year)

Table 2: Municipal waste recovery or treatment capacity requirements (including household waste recycling and composting requirements) in Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham taking into account current capacity (thousand tonnes per year)

The above calculations indicate that Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham will require an additional 337,000 tonnes of municipal waste recycling, composting, treatment or recovery capacity by the end of the plan period, including 61,000 tonnes of recycling and/or composting capacity.

While municipal waste represents a relatively small percentage of the overall waste generated in the plan area, it is often the end point of the production activities of other types of waste, and it can have an up-stream impact on other sources of waste generation. Municipal waste contains materials which are difficult to break down, such as glass and plastics.

A significant amount of new municipal waste recycling, composting and treatment capacity is required to achieve diversion from landfill. In order to implement the municipal waste management strategies and achieve this diversion over the long term, the three councils are working closely with the private sector to secure suitable facilities to manage municipal waste through a private finance initiative. Such provision will include the waste transfer station at Grange Lane (see policy WCS2) and a new dedicated waste recycling and recovery facility at Bolton Road, Manvers (see policy WCS3).

Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham currently produce around 700,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial waste each year (which equates to just over 10% of Yorkshire and the Humber's total commercial and industrial waste).

Unlike municipal waste, the volume of commercial and industrial waste is forecast to decrease by around 5% between 2010 and 2026, partly due to the decline in the industrial sectors of the economy and the predicted numbers of full time employees that will occur in the sub-region (see table 3).

Despite these assumptions, it is important that we make provision to maximise the amount of commercial and industrial waste that is diverted from landfill. To achieve this, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham will require an additional 180,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial recycling, composting, treatment or recovery capacity by the end of the plan period.

Table 3: Commercial and industrial waste recycling, recovery or treatment capacity requirements in Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham taking into account current capacity (thousand tonnes per year)

Based on estimates from national surveys, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham currently produce around 1.9 million tonnes of construction, demolition and excavation waste per year, over half of all the waste generated in the plan area. A fairly constant level of growth in this waste (less than 0.6%) is forecast across the whole region, which suggests there would be just under 2 million tonnes of this waste stream within Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham by 2026.

Some of this waste can be used to create development platforms, and it is often reused on site. In addition, quarries and landfill sites present opportunities to recycle or process construction, demolition and excavation waste as reclaimed aggregate (e.g. low grade infill) and the fines from this process can often be incorporated into quarry reclamation schemes. Only a small proportion (7%) of this waste will require landfill as current rates of reuse and recycling are high, and current inert landfill capacity in the plan area is sufficient to dispose of this waste over the plan period.

Table 4: Construction, demolition and excavation waste forecasts (thousand tonnes per year)

Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham currently produce approximately 216,000 tonnes of agricultural waste per year, and this is forecast to decrease to approximately 84,000 tonnes by the end of the plan period. It is expected that most agricultural waste (particularly animal matter and vegetable plants) will be recycled and treated at the place of production (i.e. existing farms), or sent to dedicated composting facilities in other parts of the plan area, such as Brier Hills Farm (see policy WCS2).

It is estimated that around 2% of agricultural waste is non-natural (such as plastics, redundant machinery, clinical waste and packaging). Due to changes in legislation, farmers now have a duty to manage and dispose of their non-natural waste in the same way as other commercial and industrial operations. This means that the proportion of agricultural waste which needs to be proactively managed at waste recycling or treatment facilities could increase. However, as this would be an increasing proportion of an overall decreasing amount of waste, the actual tonnages involved are relatively small.

Table 5: Agricultural waste forecasts (thousand tonnes per year)

Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham contribute around 17% of the Yorkshire and Humber region's hazardous waste (equating to around 85,000 tonnes per annum, of which around 21,000 tonnes is landfilled).

We do not need to allocate land to accommodate specialist hazardous waste facilities since arisings are not expected to increase over the plan period and there appears to be sufficient capacity at existing recovery, treatment and disposal sites within the region. Any hazardous waste that cannot be recycled or treated will continue to be sent to a large specialist landfill site in East Yorkshire, which serves the whole region and further afield. A number of small-scale waste transfer stations across the three boroughs are licensed to accept hazardous waste where it is bulked up and transferred to specialist facilities both within and outside the region.

Policies WCS6 and 7 of the Joint Waste Plan seek to encourage more on site processing and waste treatment (e.g. contaminated soils) at the local level. This in turn will help to reduce the need to build new facilities.

Because of its specialist nature, low level radioactive waste is addressed at the national level and most of it arises from the decommissioning and clean-up of nuclear sites, none of which are located in the plan area.

The main aim of the Joint Waste Plan is to provide more facilities that manage waste in the most sustainable ways and reduce reliance on landfill. However, there will still be a continuing need to dispose of our waste that cannot be recycled, composted or treated (known as residual waste) within our existing landfill sites.

The table overleaf shows there is likely to be sufficient capacity within our existing licensed landfill sites to meet our future municipal, commercial and industrial waste disposal requirements over the plan period. Furthermore, surplus capacity will be available during the plan period if our recycling, composting and recovery targets are exceeded. In addition, some inert landfill sites have spare capacity which could be used to accommodate municipal, commercial and industrial waste (i.e. non-inert waste) and policy WCS5 provides flexibility for additional capacity should it be required during the plan period. For instance, the availability of voidspace will depend on a range of factors, including the life expectancy of landfill sites, the type of waste they will accept, current and future composting/recycling/recovery rates and targets, waste minimisation initiatives, waste growth rates and the delivery of new recycling and treatment facilities on the strategic sites (policy WCS3).

Policy WCS5 also safeguards existing landfill sites which have significant capacity remaining to dispose of this waste.

Table 6: Municipal, commercial and industrial landfill requirements (thousand tonnes per year)

Successful diversion from landfill will require more effective sorting and separation of municipal, commercial and industrial waste to increase quantities being recycled, composted and treated as well as stabilise and reduce the biodegradable element before residual waste is sent to landfill.

A proportion of our waste (e.g. hazardous waste and some municipal, commercial and industrial waste) is exported to treatment and disposal facilities outside the plan area. Some waste is also imported from neighbouring authorities (e.g. Sheffield and Wakefield) into our landfill sites. However, cross boundary movements are likely to decrease over the course of the plan period so long as neighbouring authorities are successful in their intentions to manage their waste within their own boundaries.

The city of Sheffield will continue to play a key role in the plan area in the context of the waste hierarchy because:

• a proportion of our municipal, commercial and industrial waste will continue to be recycled and treated in Sheffield (and vice versa) in the short and medium term (e.g. the material recycling facility at Beighton in Rotherham and the energy recovery facility at Bernard Road in Sheffield); and
• strong links have been established between individual councils and waste operators through the Sheffield city region programme.

Sheffield's Core Strategy indicates that their last remaining landfill site at Parkwood Springs will close in 2018 but that the city can just provide for its needs up to 2024. In the event of a shortfall, the evidence suggests that existing landfill sites within Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham might not have spare capacity to dispose of the combined left over waste from the four councils of South Yorkshire during the remainder of the plan period. In these circumstances, there may be a need to carry out a wider review of landfill provision across the city region. Such a review would provide opportunities to explore integrated waste solutions across the city region.

As part of our commitment to liaise with relevant bodies, such as neighbouring councils, government agencies and waste operators, we will continue to monitor the capacity of waste management sites across the plan area (including landfill availability) and proposed sites in other parts of the region should they become available to take a proportion of our waste in the long term.

The river Don and the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation Canal - an inland waterway running from Goole via the Aire and Calder Navigation towards Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield - are available as freight transportation routes to carry bulk waste.

By 2026, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham must provide sufficient new waste management facilities to meet the capacity shortfall of around 517,000 tonnes of recycling, treatment and recovery capacity for municipal, commercial and industrial waste. This could be met through the provision of three large sites (100 - 400,000 tonnes/year) or a number of smaller sites.

Table 7: Total new municipal, commercial and industrial recycling, treatment and recovery capacity requirements to meet future shortfall (thousand tonnes per year)

The next section explains how our waste capacity needs will be delivered and monitored.