Understanding how the rules impact on your project

Before reading this guide

This guide aims to assist communities to understand good practice and to assist in understanding current regulatory processes.  It is understood to be accurate at the time of writing (May 2026), if you require further assistance please contact us or Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and/or the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) directly.

A list of the SEPA offices across Scotland , can be found here.  If you have a general enquiry contact them online or by phone Monday – Friday 8am – 6pm: 0300 099 6699. The APHA can be contacted at their regional offices and the contact details are here.

Important things to consider when sizing your project

As of November 2025, SEPA made changes to the legislation relating to Waste Activities, which includes anaerobic digestion and composting. These changes mean that most small scale community composting, is now considered Low Risk 

• Low Risk composting projects.  There are 3 different options for these, but the one most linked to community composting projects is Low Risk Waste Activity 17 (LRWA 17) i.e. Composting less than, or equal to, 1 tonne of waste, including Animal By-Product food waste (i.e., mixed food waste) per day in an enclosed system. For example, at a hotel, hospital, college campus, or market.
• Anaerobic digestion of waste up to 100 tonnes. It is unlikely that community projects will have the equipment to be able to undertake this method of composting.
• Composting in a closed system less than or equal to 500 tonnes. It is felt that the scale of this would be too large for community composting solutions.
• Composting in an open system less than or equal to 500 tonnes. Although on first reading this may seem appropriate, this is still too large for community composting initiatives and would require registration and other control measures. 

For this guide the first scale category above is considered to be appropriate for community projects.  Registration or Licences are needed for the other categories and these involve the need to set out a complex set of plans for the activities proposed. It is therefore recommended that community projects fully review the low risk waste management guidance and plan their projects in line with this.

The key thing to note in this updated guidance is that if you are including Animal By-Products it must be in an enclosed vessel. This can include daleks, simple pallet bays with a lid, a Hotbin, and more, check out our Decision-Making Guide for more information and planning guidance.

For projects starting out, we consider it worthwhile starting with just raw (uncooked) fruit and vegetable scraps. Until you’ve got working systems in place with the project and can determine what temperature your composting process is reaching. This will allow you to plan for the potential to use a wider range food waste – including plate scrapings, and wider kitchen waste. 

If you only compost fruit and vegetable waste (peelings, leftovers, etc) and do not take food waste containing meat or other animal by-products (e.g.  eggs, egg shells, fish, shell fish or oil used for cooking meat etc) then your project will NOT need to be regulated by the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA).