Where material comes from and where it ends up
The licensed waste estate in England and Wales, every closed landfill, 11,640 quarries, and the recycling, transfer, scrap and wastewater sites that make up Britain's materials economy.
Circular economy targets are set nationally and delivered at specific addresses. The waste and materials map shows the estate that has to deliver them.
Out
1,917 permitted waste sites in England, 2,292 waste permits in Wales, 15,555 licensed sites in Scotland, 1,923 active landfill sites and 21,733 closed ones. Plus 1,530 recycling centres, 278 waste transfer stations and 466 scrap yards.
The permitted estate is the regulated core; the OpenStreetMap layers alongside it fill in the sites that operate below the permitting threshold or are simply not published as a register.
In
11,640 quarries and extraction sites — the supply side of the same system, and the reason minerals plan areas exist. 44 minerals plans and 48 waste plans define where local authorities have decided this activity may happen at all.
Water treatment as materials handling
6,763 wastewater treatment works, 1,545 water treatment works and 3,006 pumping stations sit here rather than on the water map, because as infrastructure they are materials processing: things arrive, are separated, and leave in different forms.
Sources
Environment Agency permitted waste sites and historic landfill, Natural Resources Wales waste permits and closed mining waste, SEPA, and OpenStreetMap via Overpass — under the Open Government Licence v3 and ODbL.