Operations & enforcement
What is pre-treatment?
Pre-treatment is treating waste before it is landfilled — physically, thermally, chemically or biologically — so that its volume or its hazardous nature is reduced. Untreated waste generally may not be landfilled.
The commonest form is sorting. Removing recyclable material from a mixed load is treatment, which is why waste passing through a transfer station usually satisfies the requirement and waste going direct from a skip does not.
The test has three parts: it must be a physical, thermal, chemical or biological process; it must change the characteristics of the waste; and it must do so in order to reduce volume or hazard.
Responsibility sits with whoever sends waste to landfill, and the landfill operator is expected to satisfy themselves it has happened. Both ends of the transaction therefore need the same evidence.
What goes wrong in practice
- Assumed to have happened because waste passed through a site, without evidence of what was done.
- Compaction treated as pre-treatment, which it is not on its own.
- No record of the treatment for the landfill operator to rely on.