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Waste statistics regulations

The European Union Waste Statistics Regulation (2150/2002/EC) came into force in November 2002. It requires all Member States to provide data to the European Commission every two years on the generation and treatment of waste and on the number and capacity of waste management facilities. In this context, waste treatment covers incineration, recovery and disposal.

The aim of the Regulation is to establish a European-wide dataset on waste generation and treatment so that, for example, waste policies and legislation can be better monitored and evaluated. Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, compiles the data to provide statistics at the European level.

SEPA's role is to prepare data for Scotland and send it to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), who then compile it into a UK dataset for submission to Eurostat. The UK datasets are available on Defra’s website and the European datasets are available on the Eurostat website.

SEPA compiles data on the quantity and types of waste generated and treated in Scotland as a whole and by business sector. A variety of data is included, including commercial and industrial waste, and household waste. Commercial and industrial waste data are derived from licensed/permitted site returns and exempt activity returns. Household data are obtained from WasteDataFlow.

Each Member State is also required to publish a ‘quality report’ for the data. The UK quality report and those for other Member States are available on the CIRCABC website.