What the ban says and what SEPA said
The ban on biodegradable municipal waste to landfill was written into Scottish law in 2012 and finally took effect on 31 December 2025. It covers the waste that breaks down and produces methane in the ground: food, garden waste, paper, card, wood and the mixed black-bag waste that contains them. The background is in Scotland's landfill ban explained.
Two months before the date, on 29 October 2025, SEPA published a temporary regulatory position statement. It said plainly that not all of the treatment capacity and logistics needed to enforce the ban would be in place by the end of the year, and that it would not take enforcement action against landfilling of banned waste until 1 January 2028.
That is not a repeal. The ban is in force. A landfill operator accepting banned waste is doing something the law prohibits, and SEPA is choosing not to act on it for a defined period, under conditions.
- Ban in force from 31 December 2025
- Covers waste that rots: food, garden, paper, card, wood
- SEPA statement issued 29 October 2025
- No enforcement until 1 January 2028
- Operators must notify SEPA to use the relief
- Records required, recycling still prioritised
The conditions on the relief
An operator who wants to rely on the position statement has to submit a notification form to SEPA and receive confirmation of satisfactory receipt, which SEPA aims to give within five working days. Copies of that confirmation have to go to the landfill operator taking the waste.
They must keep the records the statement requires, and they must continue to prioritise waste prevention, reuse, recycling and any available non-landfill treatment. The relief is for waste that genuinely has nowhere else to go, not for waste that could have been recycled and was not.
SEPA's stated aim is to keep environmental protection in place and to minimise whole-system greenhouse gas emissions during the capacity gap. It specifically wants to avoid waste being hauled excessive distances or exported abroad simply to comply on paper.
Rather not wait for 2028?
Our loads are sorted at the transfer station now. Food, garden and paper never see a landfill gate.
Why the capacity is not there
Scotland's plan for banned waste was to send it to energy-from-waste plants instead. There are around fourteen of them, and more capacity is due between 2026 and 2027. But the August 2026 capacity review put the shortfall at around 0.4 million tonnes in 2026, narrowing to almost nothing by 2028 and only then turning into a surplus.
Industry bodies warned through 2025 that the ban would push waste south to English landfills and incinerators, and that planned plant shutdowns for maintenance would produce regular leakage even once the numbers balance. The 2028 date lines up with the point at which the modelling says Scotland can cope.
Our own view is the one in energy from waste in Scotland, explained honestly: the plants are the least bad option for what is left after recycling, and the real lever is producing less residual waste in the first place.
What it means for a household or business
For a household, nothing changes in what you are asked to do. Your food and garden waste should already be going in the caddy and the brown bin, and what we collect from a clearance is sorted before any of it goes anywhere near a landfill gate.
For a business, the relief is for waste operators, not for you. Your obligations under the Waste (Scotland) Regulations to separate food, paper, card, plastics, metals and glass have not moved, and what the landfill ban means for businesses still applies in full.
For a clearance, the practical effect is that a load containing garden waste, old paperwork and food from a fridge is now a load that a responsible carrier sorts, because sorted waste has somewhere to go and mixed waste increasingly does not. That is how our rubbish removal and garden rubbish clearance already work, and it is why the price is by the load rather than by the tonne.
