Wednesday 26th May, The Source Conference Centre, Sheffield

Find out more and register FREE as an individual member @ www.sorp.org

Attend and listen to presentations on:
 Winning Commercial food waste business – How hard can it be?
 Collection – Performance and Efficiency in Partnership
 Turning Waste into Opportunities
 Creating valued products from your waste/resource
 Delivering Advanced Biological Treatment Processes
 Quality Compost the Cost and Value- The Choices Facing Operators
 Using ‘waste’ resources for soil benefit
 The sensitivities of the agricultural market using recyclate
 Using organic resources – A farmer’s view

A few of the companies already booked to attend include:

ADAS, CO2 Sense, Entec UK, Enterprise Plc, Envirolink NW, Environment Agency, Northumbrian Water, Scottish Water Horizons, Tanks & Vessels, Yorkshire Water , Wessex Water, WRAP.

To book your place please just complete and return the attached booking form to fax 01924 257455 or visit www.aquaenviro.co.uk

Introducing ambitious Europe-wide targets for the separate collection of both food and garden waste could offer environmental and cost benefits worth more than €7billion (£6 billion) between 2013 and 2020, according to a report published as part of the European Commission’s work on potential new EU bio-waste legislation.

The study, entitled ‘Assessment of the options to improve the management of bio-waste in the EU’ was published earlier this year with little fanfare by consultants ARCADIS and Eunomia, to look at the relative benefits and costs of various potential policy measures to deal with bio-degradable waste.

It emerged as the European Parliament’s environment committee is set to consider a draft report this week (April 28) drawn up by one of its members that urges the European Commission to develop proposals for a specific bio-waste directive by the end of 2010.

This could provide renewed momentum for supporters of separate legislation on bio-waste, in the face of recent indications that the Commission did not wish to pursue a legislative proposal.

The consultants’ report concluded that, in all cases where separate targets for collecting the two waste streams were included, there would be a “significant” net benefit to society. The benefit would be increased even further if the food waste was treated using anaerobic digestion (AD), due to the reduced greenhouse gas emissions that brings, it added.

It compares the approach with a ‘baseline’ scenario which assumes EU member states meet the targets for diverting waste from landfill set by the EU Landfill Directive, including a “minimum quantity” of treatment of bio-waste to reach this goal.

The targets outlined in the report as a “high ambition” scenario are 60% for food waste and 90% for green waste to be reached by 2020, with all garden waste above a 2006 baseline level being treated using in-vessel composting and food waste being sent for either IVC or AD.

The report also claimed that there were longer term benefits from providing additional treatment of bio-waste, explaining that: “The additional treatment of source separated bio-waste develops a significant annual benefit to society from 2020 onwards.

“This is of great importance since, given that nearly 40% of the total benefit occurs in 2020, the continued benefits, beyond the period modelled in this study, will remain significant,” it added.

The report is intended to support the Commission’s continuing work on potentially developing a separate legislative proposal for bio-waste, such as a possible ‘Bio-waste Directive’.

A green paper looking at future options for managing bio-waste in the European Union was published by the Commission in December 2008, raising hopes that a separate legislative proposal could be brought forward.

Read the full news items at Organics Recycling.

Renewable Energy Assurance Ltd., a part of the clean energy organisation known as the Renewable Energy Association, administers the Scheme, and has chosen 2 independent Certifying Bodies to appraise plants fairly against the standard.

A Panel with an independent Chair controls the Scheme and its rules, and makes sure that it’s working in the best interests of the users of biofertiliser, that it protects the environment and guarantees human, animal and plant health.

The Biofertiliser Certification scheme has been set up to provide guarantee to customers, farmers, food producers and shops that biofertiliser produced from anaerobic digestion processes is safe and of a high quality.

Biofertiliser is the name adopted for quality digestate materials produced when anaerobic digestion processes break down organic material left over from food and farm processes. By certifying the digestate materials produced by the AD process against a severe standard, plant operators can supply farmers with the mandatory confidence they have to use it safely to their land. In this fashion, farmers gain a valuable source of organic, carbon-free fertilizer.

The Quality Protocol element of the scheme effectively outlines what are sufficient inputs into the Anaerobic Digestion process, assesses if the input materials are treated in a production process that’s as per the PAS110 Standard, assesses whether the digestate produced is as per parameters laid down in the PAS110 standard and outlines the records that have to be generated and kept as proof of compliance to the conditions laid down in the protocol.

One of the primary needs of the protocol is to define when a waste material stops being a waste material and becomes a non-waste product.

A plant desiring to take part in making quality digestate must show conformity with the Quality Protocol and this is usually demonstrated by authentication by an authorized controlling body. ( In Britain and Wales this could be one of several. )

The PAS110 part of the scheme outlines the minimum conditions in which the input materials should be treated and sufficient parameter boundaries for items such pH and heavy metals. PAS is the short name for Publicly Available Standard, while 110 outlines which standard it complies with.

Visit the UK Biofertiliser web site for more information.

The contract, which is for five years with a potential extension of up to a further four years, will cover four local authorities: Bristol city council (as lead authority), Bath & North East Somerset council, North Somerset council and South Gloucestershire council. Five bids were invited for the work, but only three received.

The aim of the contract is to ensure that there is sufficient treatment capacity to divert waste from landfill to meet the Authorities’ annual LATS allowances over the period 2011/12 to 2015/16. The award forms phase two of a four phase joint waste management strategy approved by the Partnership in June.

Phase one of the Partnership’s work was source segregation contracts for organic wastes. There is still the possibility that the authorities might opt for incineration as a third stage although there is some uncertainty about this. In the recent local authority elections, the Liberal Democrats won Bristol and they campaigned on the back of not having an incinerator in the region.
MBT solution

Now, New Earth Solutions will be bringing a mechanical biological treatment solution to the West of England with construction of a plant in the Avonmouth area. The plant is to be 200,000 tonnes in size and will be New Earth’s largest development to date. This allows for 80,000 tonnes of merchant capacity.

Of the 120,000 tonnes fed in to the plant, more than 50% will be reduced through losses in mass. Non-ferrous, ferrous and high grade plastics will be recovered, totalling about 15% of the input and about 15% will be used as a compost like output for land. The balance will be used for a biomass refuse derived fuel which could be used in complementary plant near the MBT facility.

Value of the contract has not yet been disclosed but is thought to be about £50 million and the plant is due to be operational in April 2011.

Councillor Carl Francis-Pester, chair of the Partnership’s joint waste management committee, said: “New Earth Solutions will provide the councils with a cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable way to dispose of residual household waste.”

Chris Cox, managing director of New Earth Solutions, told letsrecycle.com: “We are delighted to have been chosen by the West of England Partnership.”
Related links

* New Earth Solutions
* West of England Partnership

Cost of the contract is based on the principle that any contract procured by the Partnership will be operated on a partnership basis with costs shared and allocated on an equitable basis. According to the Partnership, the New Earth Solutions project requires each authority to identify and then commit, on an annual basis, the delivery of a specified volume of waste to the treatment facility.

The Partnership said: “Each authority will have a minimum tonnage assigned to it for each of the initial five years of the contract, in order that the partnership can fulfil its overall minimum tonnage obligations to the contractor. Each authority will commit to pay its share of the contract costs, the pooled haulage costs and the project management and administrative costs in respect of its guaranteed minimum tonnage for the duration of the initial five years of the contract, irrespective of whether it delivers the agreed tonnage or a lower tonnage.

More at LetsRecycle..

Wiltshire county council has given the go-ahead for Marlborough-based waste management company Hills Group to build a £15 million mechanical biological treatment (MBT) facility at Westbury.

The county council awarded planning permission last week (March 18) for Hills to develop the 45,000 tonne-a-year capacity plant, which will be known as the Northacre Recovery Centre, as part of its contract to dispose of Wiltshire’s residual household waste.

Hills also intends to build a £1 million household waste and recycling centre at the Stephenson Road site in Westbury.

Speaking after the approval, Alan Pardoe, chairman of Hills Group, said: “We are delighted by today’s decision. This plant is a key element of Wiltshire’s overall war on waste and means that we can look forward to the day when at least 85 per cent of the county’s waste can be diverted from landfill. It adds up to a much more sustainable future.”

Originally, Hills had planned to send 30,000 tonnes of solid recovered fuel (SRF) generated by the proposed plant to be used in a cement kiln run by Lafarge Aggregates in Westbury before Lafarge was forced to mothball the operation due to the effect the economic downturn had on the construction market. However, the firm said it was now in talks to send the fuel elsewhere.

Mr Pardoe said: “Fuels of this type that reduce both waste and CO2 have a big future in the UK. We are already in discussions with other end-users and are confident that other outlets will be found for this fuel.”

A spokeswoman for Wiltshire county council confirmed that contract negotiations for the SRF were underway.

See letsrecycle.com story.

26-01-2009

Gasification specialists Energos have been appointed to provide the technology for a multi-million pound waste treatment facility being built in Derby.

The company, which is part of Manchester-based renewable energy firm ENER-G, will help to develop a 140,000 tonne-a-year gasification facility on Sinfin Lane in Derby on behalf of a joint venture between United Utilities and services firm Interserve.

An artist’s impression of the Sinfin Lane facility that will use Energos’ gasification technology

United Utilities and Interserve were confirmed on January 13 as preferred bidder for a 27-year deal, beginning in 2010, to design, build and operate a facility to process both Derbyshire county council and Derby city council’s residual household waste.

Energos’ appointment means the plant will use their patented version of the advanced thermal treatment process to convert the waste into a gas, which will then be used to produce 8MW of electricity for export to the National Grid.

Energos’ process has already been installed in a plant on the Isle of Wight which opened last year (see letsrecycle.com story) and, in July 2008, the company submitted a planning proposal to build an 80,000 tonne-a-year capacity facility at Knowsley, on Merseyside (see letsrecycle.com story).

The Derby project’s joint venture project director, Blair Marriott, said: “We are pleased to be working with Energos which offers a world class, low emission technology and a proven reputation for excellence.

“Our proposed state-of-the-art waste management facility points the way forward for UK municipal solid waste management and is a viable and environmentally friendly alternative to landfill and incineration,” he added.

Energos’ managing director, Nick Dawber, described the facility as “a community-sized solution to responsibly dealing with local waste.”

United Utilities and Interserve were announced as preferred bidder for the Derbyshire contract in December 2008, winning a lengthy head-to-head contest with Spanish-owned Waste Recycling Group (WRG) (see letsrecycle.com story).

The deal represents United Utilities first major contract success in the waste sector, though it is one of four shortlisted bidders for the Cheshire PFI contract (see letsrecycle.com story), and is also part of the consortium the ‘Resource from Waste Alliance’ which is the running for the Merseyside PFI waste deal (see letsrecycle.com story).

At the Wasters blog we started the year by reporting the gap between Ireland’s actual rates of recycling and waste diversion away from landfill, and the target requirements. It seems that Ireland will need to speed up its progress or soon face fines from the EU for failing to comply with the targets set up in the Landfill Directive.

This contrasted strongly against stories of success from the United Kingdom which were posted on our blog throughout the year. In fact, the Environment Secretary for Scotland announced ambitious plans to exceed the EU targets, for waste management in Scotland. The new targets amount to 60 percent recycling by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025. Also, incineration received a knock as a part of this plan, when it became clear that no more than 25 percent of waste is to be used to generate energy. The ultimate target is that they will reduce municipal waste being sent to landfill to just 5 percent by 2025. That is quite a target to go for! Especially as the easy option of incineration will be severely capped.

All the time last year, new announcements of new waste collection and massive investment in waste and secondary resource processing facilities planned were being made by the big five waste management companies, and indeed newcomers to the PFI Contracts, especially for the very large big-city contracts.

At the start of the year all were surprised that the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority (GMWDA) was still in extended negotiation for its PFI Contract. In March we were told that they would very soon be announcing the award. However, the end of April arrived before there was a further delay announced. Even now the deal is not resolved.

Of course, all large contract negotiations are suffering from the much tougher bank lending rules which have been in place since the credit crunch really began to bite in the summer. The contractors bidding have found that the banks have been pulling back on their borrowing and at the very least their interest rates will have no doubt been revised. At a contract value in the region of reported £3 billion, and said to be the largest municipal waste contract in Europe, the GMWDA deal must be extremely hard to clinch.

The latest News (from LetsRecycle.com) about the Manchester PFI contract, at the start of December was that the banks were completing final formalities with a hoped for Christmas signing. The Waster has not seen an announcement so far, so we will hopefully receive the good news as one of the first events in the UK waste management scene in 2009!

The Manchester contract, and many others, need signing soon and then to move into the construction stage for the new facilities planned and much needed in order for the UK recycling and waste diversion targets to be met in the years to come.

One of the highlights for the Waster (who has been described as “born to landfill”) was a German research paper reported in April to be recommending the use of landfill as a carbon sink, as in carbon sequestration/storage. The posting was titled “Carbon Storage – A Renaissance for Landfill?”. How refreshing it was for a landfill lover like the Waster to be told that landfilling should be increased and encouraged and certainly not reduced. Wonderful! More of it please!

Autumn news showed the waste industry to be remarkably resilient to the economic slowdown, although landfill operators were, and still are, reporting the current remarkable rarity of once ever-present construction waste vehicles arriving at their landfill gates.

Of course part of the reduction might be due to better management of waste at the construction sites themselves, and in particular this may have had a small effect after the introduction, in the spring by the UK government, of a new legal requirement. The new rule is that all large construction sites produce Site Waste Management Plans (SWMPs) for every site from now on.

However, the lack of much SWMP activity reportedly being seen from the construction industry in setting up these plans shows that it is the economic slowdown rather than much better construction site waste minimisation and recycling that is the predominant effect here!

All in all, the UK waste management industry continues in the path set for it by the politicians in the 1986 Maastricht Treaty. Don’t forget that ALL EU member nation policy on waste-related legislation is derived from the EU commission and through qualified majority voting (unanimity in these matters is a thing of the past). The Waster is UK based and from his point of view the waste legislation has nothing directly to do with public health or environmental health issues in the UK.

In effect this means that the degree to which EU targets are set and goals derived make no allowance for national differences, bear no relationship to what might be more or less sustainable from a climate change perspective, and make no allowance for cost/benefit to local communities.

The Waster’s view is that this is nowhere more obvious than in the last of the big news events of the year. That is the autumn’s big and ever-rising cost of recycling due to the economic slowdown. How can it be right that policy is so inflexible that the ratepayers have to pick up whatever bill the waste industry incurs when the raw materials price falls through the floor?

In any other market there would be a market self-correction when the recyclers reduced their output to match the value gained from the recycled materials. In fact, the recycling market is bound to create these huge fluctuations as it is so distorted by inflexible EU policy.

As the Waster has been around for a long time, he continues to see it as remarkable that the current waste policies have lasted for as long as they have in their current form and ever increasingly are being built with huge investment into the fabric of our nation.

The concern must be how well technically they are based, when MBT in all its forms is put forward as better than incineration by our policy makers. Given public hostility in the UK to incineration it may be convenient to neglect the fact that no proper primary research has been done into the long-term impacts of MBT residues which receive only scant drying or composting treatment in order to declassify them from being organic waste. This allows this supposedly processed material to be sent to landfill without, on paper, contributing the the organic waste sent to landfill. This must surely be bending the rules beyond the point of forgiveness, purely for convenience?

Furthermore, why all the obsession we see with the carbon cycle within the waste regulators and impacts – to the almost complete neglect of consideration of the nitrogen cycle?

Both must be got right for a healthy environment and both need very careful consideration. However, the Waster is not aware of any recent research into the fate of nitrogen from waste residues, which he considers must be highly neglectful.

As we said earlier, the Waster does have a long memory, and he does remember that the UK only signed up to the Landfill Directive after resisting doing so for 11 years, in exchange for a deal with the Spanish on fishing quotas!

We did not know then what that had to do with sound waste management or environmental protection, and that has not changed.

So, the Waster will continue through 2009 to take a critical view of the waste scene as it implements EU legislation, and will plea for ALL aspects of policy to be founded on sound principles, rather than embarking on huge investments in waste technology in waste processing without good research to back up politically convenient theory.

Those were the main issues for the Wastersblog in 2008, and that ends our look back at the year 2008.

Your comments on this blog posting will, as always, be highly welcomed. Don’t be shy – comment away! (Email me direct if you have any problems with the commenting system on the blog site. All previous problems you might have experienced with the comments system have been rectified.)

The Waster would like to take this opportunity to wish all his readers a happy and prosperous new year.

Nevertheless, this is exactly why public money is being well spent when put into these projects.

Defra Demonstrator Projects are full scale operational demonstration projects for innovative waste technologies, with UK government funding.

The following comes as published in the Defra Demonstrator News, Edition 2:-

Recent allegations regarding the use of compost like output (CLO) produced by one aerobic digestion plant operator have been investigated by the Environment Agency (EA) and Defra Animal Health.

The outcome of the investigation was that the CLO that was to be used as restoration material at the demonstrator operator’s owned landfill sites will now be required to be disposed of to landfill.

The operator responded quickly and proactively to these findings, immediately commencing a series of improvement works to the site:

• Installation of a new temperature monitoring system.
• Installation of a heater phase in the bottom compartment of each tower which will ensure absolute achievement of Animal by Products Regulations temperature requirements.
• Application of insulation to the outer skin of the non-Demonstrator metal towers to improve heat retention.
• Installation of a new trommel screen to improve the CLO segregation stage and reduce physical contaminants.

Once these works are completed, the demonstrator operator will recalibrate and re-commission the plant. The operator also plans to install a further stage of CLO product refinement equipment later in the summer.

These changes are intended to address EA guidance on animal by-products processing requirements and the level of plastic contamination in the CLO.

These alterations at the site demonstrate some key learning outcomes with regard to new technologies for biological treatment which will add to the many invaluable outcomes of this Programme to date.

NTDP Website
For more detailed information on the Demonstrator Programme, plants and technologies go to the Defra Wip web site. For more abckground about the various Waste Technologies visit here. 

With space left for just six years worth of garbage in the Dane County Landfill, officials are on the verge of re-engineering the 76-acre site to install a controversial system that will hasten the decomposition of waste and extend the operation of the facility by as much as 10 to 15 years.

But critics say the plan poses long-term threats to air and groundwater. And they worry that continuing to rely on the landfill has short-circuited a thorough discussion of how the region’s waste will be disposed of in the future. They say the county is missing an opportunity to move toward a future without landfills and to rely more heavily on recycling, including recycling of organic wastes such as food.

Dane County is not alone in its struggles with waste. Bill Casey, solid waste director for Columbia County and a board member of the Wisconsin Counties Solid Waste Management Association, said there are only 50 landfills, both private and municipal, operating in the state. Many of them are fast filling up, Casey said, so communities throughout the state are in the midst of discussions about where to put their garbage.

“We’re seeing this all over the state”, Casey said. “It’s a problem. It’s going to continue to be a problem. Every time we close a landfill, that waste has to go someplace else. These are going to be difficult decisions.”

Bioreactor planned

Meanwhile, county engineers are preparing to build a $2-million bioreactor at the Dane County Landfill, just east of Interstate 39-90 on Highway 12-18.

“Bioreactor ‘ ‘ is a fancy name for a system of pumps and pipes that will circulate water and air through the landfilled garbage and cause it to decompose more quickly, thus freeing up space for more waste, said Gerald Mandli, public works director for Dane County.

The new system, which may be in operation by next fall, basically turns the landfill into “a cooking vessel, ‘ ‘ Mandli said.

Use of the bioreactor turns the current science behind the landfill ‘s operation on its head. Since it went into operation in 1986, the object has been to keep moisture away from the garbage. In fact, the common name for the system in use at the Dane County landfill and most landfills across the country is “dry tombing. ‘ ‘

Currently, about 20,000 gallons a day of leachate — Mandli calls it “garbage juice ‘ ‘ — from decomposing garbage is pumped out of the landfill and piped to the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District plant where it is treated and discharged along with other processed wastes.

To make the bioreactor work, that leachate would be recirculated through the landfill, along with air. The air and water both hasten decomposition.

Mandli said the bioreactor was approved by the County Board last year after it became apparent that the landfill was filling up faster than anticipated.

Tons of unexpected waste jammed the landfill in 2006 and 2007, from the homes destroyed and damaged by the Stoughton-area tornado in August 2005 and from the roofing materials replaced after a hailstorm in April 2006. The landfill took in 53,000 tons of shingles in the wake of hailstorms, Mandli said.

The bioreactor is still in the design stage. Mandli said the county is taking its time with the project so that all potential problems are addressed.

More methane

Chief among those problems, according to Peter Anderson, owner of Recycleworlds Consulting in Madison and a nationally-known expert on recycling and waste disposal, is the increased production of methane, a gas produced by the decomposing garbage.

Currently, methane gas is drawn by a vacuum system from the landfill and used to power generators that turn it into electricity. That electricity, enough to power 5,000 homes, is sold to Madison Gas & Electric for $1.2 million a year. More…

(Waster: This sounds rather like what we term in Europe a “Flushing” landfill. This treatment of a landfill is not permissible within the EU Landfill Directive. Also, the removal of high Landfill Gas yield is usually impeded by the greater extent of perched water tables and flooded gas extraction wells such that increased gas yields would not necessarily result from this treatment at all.)

Scottish and Southern Energy has acquired Slough Heat and Power, which runs one of the UK’s largest biomass plants using wastes to generate energy, in a £49.25 million deal.

Slough Heat and Power, which operates a combined heat and power plant, has been acquired by Scottish and Southern Energy.

The power giant announced today it has completed the takeover of the Berkshire business, located in the Slough Trading Estate, after buying shares previously owned by property investment company SEGRO (Slough Estates Group).

Slough Heat and Power operates a combined heat and power plant which uses wood chip, biomass and waste paper to produce around 80 Megawatts of electricity each year as well as heat.

Renewable energy
The plant has the capacity to produce 100 Megawatts of electricity each year and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) aims to use its latest acquisition to boost the amount of renewable energy it generates.

Chief executive Ian Marchant said: “While all of the assets at Slough are important, I am particularly pleased that SSE now owns and operates the UK’s largest dedicated biomass energy facility.

“As well as reinforcing our position as the UK’s leading generator of electricity from renewable sources, this will give us a platform from which to build up our interests in biomass and waste-to-energy, areas which we believe will become increasingly important over the next decade.”  More…