A European Commission study published on 1 February 2010 counsels setting up a dedicated European body to oversee the execution and enforcement of ECU waste law. The study is a part of a collection of steps being taken by the Commission to enhance waste management and guarantee it meets the standards set by ECU legislation to guard voters and the environment.

Illegal discarding of waste continues on a big scale, many landfill sites are sub-standard and in some Member States basic waste infrastructure is still missing. Illegal waste shipments are also a concern.

A second report made public today explains nearly one 5th of waste shipments checked as an element of recent enforcement actions in Member States were illegal. Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas expounded :

“Compliance with ECU legislation is crucial if we are to reach the overarching objective of ECU waste legislation, which is to offer protection to the health of European voters and the environment. We must look at all the options, including setting up an ECU agency or body which could enable ECU legislation to supply the maximum advantages for voters, the environment and the ECU economy.”

Study counsels dedicated agency to apply waste law Overseeing the safe and environmentally sound management of waste is one of the most significant environmental challenges facing the EU today. A projected 2.6 bill tons of waste is generated in the EU every year about 90 million tons of this is filed as unsafe.

The study broadcast today counsels setting up a dedicated agency at ECU level to take on the fundamental issues of poor implementation and enforcement of European waste legislation.

The size of the issue has grown in recent times following increases in waste generated and shipped in the enlarged ECU . In 2008, the European Parliament adopted a resolution encouraging the Commission to report on the viability of creating a “Community environmental inspection force”. The agency would carry out a number of jobs like reviews of enforcement systems in Member States, coordinated controls and inspection activities. This would be mixed with the making of a particular European body answerable for direct inspections and controls of facilities and sites in major cases of failure to comply.

A European network of Member States would support the agency in a number of activities. The changes are based primarily on replies from Member State officers and shareholders thru questionnaires, interviews and informal workshops. The yearly cost for carrying out the changes is guessed at only over Euros 16,000,000.

As well as other waste-related benefits, full implementation of ECU waste law would reduce emissions of CO2, including methane from landfills. This would save 2.5 bln yearly at today’s carbon cost of around thirteen Euros per tonne.

Other important business benefits from reinforcing implementation include a level playing field for European firms, better encouragement for innovation and increased access to valuable secondary raw materials. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis will be carried out this year. Further steps might be suggested during 2011.

Gaps in implementation of EU waste law Current openings in implementation and enforcement have led straight to wide-scale illegal junking and enormous numbers of landfills and other facilities and sites that don’t meet ECU standards. In some Member States, waste infrastructure is insufficient or missing ( see IP / 09 / 1795 ). Further details : http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/index.htm .

The company said that it had received written consent from the council to initiate the appeal proceedings, following March’s initial refusal of the application, which saw 20 out of 22 members of the council’s planning committee voting against the plans (see letsrecycle.com story).

Lodging an appeal means that the final decision on whether or not the plans are given the go-ahead will now be made by the government’s planning inspectorate through a public inquiry, which is expected to be held in the first half of 2010.

The company’s plans to develop the plant, known as the Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre (CERC), represented the centrepiece of the 30-year PFI-funded waste treatment contract that it signed with Cornwall county council in October 2006 (see letsrecycle.com story).

And the company’s project director, David Buckle, claimed that its proposals to develop the CERC to treat the county’s residual household waste continued to be the best option.

“There is an urgent need for this facility to avoid a waste management crisis and to provide a modern waste management solution for the whole county in which we produce energy from non-recycled waste, rather than landfill it,” he said.

If built, SITA UK has said the CERC would produce enough electricity to power the equivalent of 21,000 homes, as well as producing heat which could be provided to local businesses, and in particular the china clay industry.

Reported problems with early compactors were a tendency for the wheels to pick up refuse, particularly in wet weather, and instability due to a high centre of gravity.

The steel wheels are fitted with spikes, lugs or bars for compression and traction purposes and the configuration of the track and wheel spikes is very important. The reported fault depends to some extent on these features but it has been found that tipping in more shallow layers often overcomes this difficulty.

Modern landfill compactors would be expected to have a life expectancy and maintenance profile not far removed from other landfill plant, just don’t expect performance equivalent to civil engineering earthworks uses.

Scrapers, both towed and independently powered, are seldom seen on landfills after initial development of the bases of landfills. They are used to strip, store and replace top and subsoil, and various forms of civil engineering earthworks equipment will clearly be used for such work including mechanical diggers and trenching equipment are used on site works.

Certain features are essential when buying either vehicle;

(i) they should have cabs with roll-bars for the protection and comfort of the operator;

(ii) if a bulldozer is purchased, the blade should be designed for handling refuse — it should be higher and wider, and should stand off from the vehicle further than is normal;

(iii) a wheeled vehicle should be equipped with four-wheeled drive;

(iv) the fan should blow out from the engine instead of drawing air in, in order to reduce the risk of choking the radiator with refuse;

(v) the wheels or drums of a compactor should be self cleaning and suitable to deal with the material being imported.

The choice of landfill mobile plant depends on a number of factors; quantities and types of wastes; the activities required of the machinery; whether the material delivered to the site has been previously treated; location and nature of any materials on site which might be used for side or top cover. However, wheeled vehicles will always be popular.

Cost Considerations

When purchasing a vehicle for controlled tip work, running costs must inevitably be considered along with the standard of work which the vehicle is capable of achieving. In the case of a tracked vehicle, track maintenance costs can be high as there is a great deal of wear due to the abrasive nature of the material in which the tracks are running, but costs can be reduced by changing the vehicle before major repairs are necessary and when the exchange value is favourable.

The disadvantage of punctures has to some extent been overcome as far as wheeled vehicles are concerned, and is completely eradicated for steel-cutting wheel equipped compactors, but taking into consideration their quality of work, whilst they may be faster they are not capable of the high standards of levelling of the tracked vehicle.

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..

February 24, 2009 6:34 a.m. EST
Nidhi Sharma – Celebrity News Service Reporter

London, England (CNS) – In a bid to make the public more aware of the hazards of discarding unused clothes, British government have launched a new campaign. The campaign, which was launched at London Fashion Week, plans to target the problem dubbed “the Primark effect.”

The Sustainable Clothing Roadmap is launched in partnership with the government and 300 of the biggest high-street stores and designers. According to various statistics, every year British consumers buy two million tonnes of clothes, and astonishingly 1.2 million tones of that ends up in the landfill, The Telegraph reports.

The report also says that only 300,000 of that are being recycled or reused. The new campaign, where Oxfam is also participating, will encourage more people to buy and donate second-hand clothes.

The initiative also includes a public information campaign to educate consumers on how to consume minimum energy during the lifetime of clothing by washing items at low temperatures and getting rid of clothes through donating to charity shops or recycling rather than landfill. More…

Source: New Civil Engineer Magazine

England is too slow at reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill and could face European Union (EU) fines as a result, the government’s public spending watchdog has warned.

The National Audit Office’s Managing the Waste PFI Programme report accuses the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) of being too slow to react when in 1999 the EU ordered member states to cut by 50% the amount of biodegradable waste they send to landfill by 2013.

It added that although 18 new PFI waste schemes worth £1.6bn are underway, local authorities had experienced delays in completing deals and bringing the projects into operation.

Auditor General Tim Burr said: “Defra is doing a lot to accelerate the programme of new waste treatment facilities being procured through private finance.”

“But, at the rate at which projects are being delivered, England risks missing the 2013 EU landfill reduction target, leaving the UK open to the possibility of fines.”

** End of NCE report **

The Waster says: The situation has the potential to deteriorate quite rapidly now for the UK’s PFI award programme. Many contracts have been delayed by the credit crunch which has meant the unexpected renegotiation of terms for loans between PFI providers and their banks when the banking system suffered so heavily in autumn 2008.

A number of PFI Contracts have been due to start since the summer, but still await award, and their programmes (which include building all the new waste processing facilities essential for the UK to meet the UE targets) must necessarily be put back.

The Greater Manchester PFI is just one example of the delays witnessed and was reported by the Wastersblog just after Christmas, yet there is still no news of award.

Landfill aims to reduce bird strikes on planes

By Steve Bartlett, St. John’s Telegram, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Last Updated: 22nd January 2009

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — The operators of a Newfoundland landfill are launching an assault on the area’s large seagull population to help reduce bird strikes by flights in and out of St. John’s International Airport.

The Robin Hood Bay landfill near St. John’s plans to use noisy pyrotechnics to scare off an estimated 25,000 birds that congregate there during peak seasons.

Jason Sinyard, manager of waste management for the city, said some birds will have to be shot.

“The thing with gulls is they get used to things in a hurry,” he said. “You may have your pyrotechnics … but if you don’t have some lethal means to back that up, the gulls very quickly get used to the scare tactics.”

There is a potential for tragedy when birds hit planes and the possibility, however slight, exists in St. John’s, where bird strikes appear to happen about once a month.

Transport Canada statistics show 17 bird strikes at St. John’s airport in 2007, for a strike rate of 4.28 per 10,000 aircraft movements. That rate ranks the city airport second worst of the top 20 airports in the country, behind only Edmonton.

The airport fulfilled federal requirements and implemented a plan to manage the gulls on its property in December 2006.

An assessment of the surrounding area the following year confirmed the obvious — that the large flock of gulls at Robin Hood Bay is adding to the risk.

The landfill, which is run by the City of St. John’s, serves the greater Avalon and is undergoing a $38.5-million upgrade. The work includes numerous site changes, such as reducing surface garbage, covering waste at day’s end and diverting food from the landfill.

Randy Mahon, operations manager with the St. John’s International Airport Authority, is satisfied with the city’s plan.

He expects it will help lower the frequency of gull strikes.

“We can be effective within our own property, but we need the help of the city and the surrounding municipalities to be really effective,” he said.

Implementation of the Robin Hood Bay strategy is in the early stages. It’s hoped most measures will be in place by the end of the next construction season. More here…

MRW – Claire Churchard, 08 Jan 2009

Cheshire County Council has saved £2.1 million by reducing the waste it sends to landfill.

The council has been able to free-up the cash due to a forecast 20 per cent reduction in landfill use, equalling about 50,000 tonnes.

“There has been a significant fall in the amount of rubbish we are having to landfill,” said the council’s Environment Executive Member Andrew Needham.

“This reduction compared to last year’s figure has happened for two main reasons. Recycling at our household waste recycling centres has more than doubled to 65 per cent under our new contractor H W Martin. This new contract has seen a 50 per cent reduction in landfill from the HWRCs. There have also been further improvements in kerbside recycling undertaken by the district councils,” he said.

Cash to be used for roads

But the money will not go back into funding for recycling and waste services in the area because “recycling is a dead duck,” Needham told MRW. He explained that the authority had a surplus of recycled materials and said the income from recycling had reduced, adding that they were now paying for people to take it.

He said the council supported the findings of the recent IMechE reportwhich called for the Government to abandon its focus on recycling and concentrate on building more energy-from-waste plants.

“Politically, dealing with waste is not easy,” Needham said, “there are no votes in it.”

PFI project

The authority is currently evaluating bidders for its £1 billion, 25-year private finance initiative waste project, which could include mechanical biological treatment and EfW technologies.

Neeedham explained that the £2.1m will not go towards funding this scheme, which is due to finalise a preferred bidder early this year. He also explained that £2.1m was a small amount in comparison to the £1 billion needed for the PFI project. More here at MRW Magazine.

The Waster notes that currently the council like elsewhere in post credit-crunch recession Britain, has to pay for recycling materials to be taken away.

Monday November 17 2008

Ireland country is heading for a major landfill crisis.

Within the next two years, almost a third of Ireland’s 35 landfills will be overflowing with rubbish.

According to figures from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 11 of the 35 landfill sites around the country are likely to be full by 2011.

Another four will be under severe pressure by 2014, creating a massive headache for the relevant local authorities.

Since 2006, Waterford County Council has been forced to take rubbish from its landfill site to another facility in Co Carlow.

By the end of next year, Mayo County Council will have to consider a similar plan when its Derinumera landfill is expected to run out of capacity.

Two of Dublin’s major dumps are also expected to reach capacity by 2010.

Among the sites facing closure are Arthurstown landfill in south county Dublin, Ballealy landfill in Fingal, Dunmore landfill in Kilkenny and Donohill landfill in south Tipperary.

Pressure

Overall, the EPA estimates that three million tonnes of waste is being thrown into landfills every year. This means that within a decade all the country’s existing dumps are likely to have reached capacity.

Only around 25 million tonnes of total landfill capacity remain nationwide.

When planned super dumps at Drehed in Kildare and Bottlehill in Cork begin operation, they are likely to begin filling fast.

Plus, the EPA expects Irish people to be generating growing amounts of waste.

Despite the new focus on recycling, the EPA projects that the amount of waste generated by each person will rise from 0.84 tonnes in 2006 to 1.15 tonnes person by 2020.

The environmental body has described the increase as “phenomenal”.

Another factor in the waste management crisis is the EU landfill directive, which will come into effect in 2010.

Under its terms, the Government will have to reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste that is disposed of in landfill.

Upward

Ireland is directed to reduce its disposal rates by 50pc. But it is also expected that biodegradable municipal waste, like waste from households and commercial activities, will rise by 4pc per year for the next decade, doubling by 2025 with the EPA.

In 2005, a total of 3.05 million tonnes of municipal waste was generated in Ireland, an increase of 65pc since 1995, and the EPA says that while the rate of increase is slowing, the direction is still upward.

The European Environment Agency has reported that Ireland ranks as the largest per capita generator of municipal waste in the EU. More …

Tyre bales at Pevensey

It will be obvious to our Wastersblog readers that the disposal of vehicle tyres is a real headache, for the waste management industry, and as motorists we are all feeling the pinch from rapidly rising tyre disposal costs.

Certainly, the last time I bought a new tyre, the garage added several pounds to my bill for disposing of the old one.

However, a number of landfill operators have been using tyres for leachate drainage within landfills for some years as an engineering material, and they have found that using tyres as drainage layers in landfills provides adequate flow capabilities, at close to zero cost for their leachate drainage. However, manhandling individual tyres to stack them efficiently on site is a tedious, dirty, and time consuming task, and this fact alone has probably done a great deal to limit tyre use uptake. Whole and granulated tyres have been used for this purpose.

That was for whole tyres, as far as we are aware, just about the only use available in landfills.

Since WRAP published a British Standards Institution (BSI) and has produced a Publicly Available Specification, PAS 108, in collaboration with the tyres reprocessing industry, a whole new range of uses has opened up, from baled tyres.

Almost overnight, baled tyres have become an engineering product with standard bale sizes and shapes, and most important of all, clear design strength data.

Designers and purchasers can now use the structural and drainage characteristics provided from the research done for the PAS, and incorporate tyre bales into designs, just like any other proprietary geo-synthetic material.

In short, providing a specification for producing compact tyre bales of a consistent and verifiable quality and dimension, opens up a new and potentially huge market for waste tyres.

The method re-uses tyres, reducing the demand for the primary aggregate materials used in the past.

The PAS 108 specification can be adopted by suppliers for producing tyre bales such that potential customers will be assured that they are procuring a construction material of consistent and verifiable quality.

Furthermore, the core of this document addresses the production, handling, storage, transport and placement of standardized tyre bales, the dimensions and properties of which are standardised and described in this PAS. So go find out more at the Landfill Site Tyre Bales page here, and you will also find the contact details for one of the first suppliers.