Landfill tax in the UK has risen year by year and now stands at £15 a tonne, but it has not had any effect on recovery and recycling practice. It soon will though, as costs rise steeply and regulations are tightened.
Landfill tax could rise to as much as £35/t, and if that has no effect by 2006 a review might lead to banning the use of landfill for compostable materials.
A Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC) estimate puts waste tonnage from UK's wholesale markets at around 90,000t a year. The cost of sending this volume of waste to landfill would be £5.4 million. By 2008, based on impending legislation changes and inflation, this figure could rise to £8.1m, a calculation the FPC says could even be an understatement of the true figures. There is certainly expected to be a 50 to 60 per cent rise in costs over the next few years.
The UK spends only 60 per cent of the EU average on waste disposal and there is a widening gap between the recycling target set by the European Commission and the recycling figure achieved in the UK. A staggering 81 per cent of UK waste is sent to landfill, compared with 10 or 15 per cent in other member states. Forthcoming EU regulations will make landfill increasingly difficult. If the UK continues as it is and cannot comply with the Landfill Directive it will be subject to fines of £180m each year.
The packaging waste laws are to be reviewed but will not change substantially, other than a rise in recovery/recycling targets. As the targets rise, there will be a shortage of packaging recovery notes (PRN), so the cost of PRNs will also rise.
Many companies have been so put off by the complexities of the packaging waste regulations that a lot of head burying has been done in the sands of the fresh produce sector. However, policing is getting tougher and so, potentially are the penalties.
The Environment Agency (EA) is prosecuting companies that do not register. If a company does not register it will face three charges for every year that it has not registered ñ failure to register, failure to recover or recycle and failure to submit a compliance certificate. Each offence attracts a fine of £3,000, so a non-compliant company will face £9,000 in fines for each year it does not comply. The cases can be tried in a magistrate's court because the fine is low. Fines will not accumulate indefinitely because the EA is only likely to go back five years, but the £3,000 per offence might rise to £4,000 or £5,000.
There are fewer places to hide than there were. The number of prosecutions has been building each year, to a high of 57 prosecutions in 2002.
The wholesale markets have recognised the need to pursue policies that encourage tenants to comply with regulations and all have acted in one way or another.
Manchester's Smithfield market is the talk of the wholesale sector at present, having installed its first vertical composter for disposing of organic material. The trial installation is run by Fairfield Composting and involves three companies on the market. The unit converts waste material into compost in seven days and can deal with 800t a year. The end product will be used in local parks and council facilities. The market is considering installing another four or five units.
The units are quite small, but room is needed for separation of waste. Six staff from Fairfield Composting run the unit.
The trial has been carried out at no cost to the wholesalers, but in future there is likely to be a cost paid through the service charge. It will, however, reduce other cost implications and it is hoped that PRNs can be generated through the process.
In Glasgow, in-vessel composting is also the chosen route and market manager Graham Wallace believes it will prove to be “a big money saver”. The markets department of Glasgow City Council has a sustainable development team, which analysed the merits of various systems before plumping for the chosen one, which offers rapid progress through a horizontal container.
Within seven days, waste has been reduced in bulk and is resellable. “Even if it still goes to landfill, the volume is reduced by 60 per cent,” says Wallace. “The way waste requirements have changed and are likely to change even more, this has to be the way to go.”
Glasgow's fruit and vegetable market produces between 4,000t and 5,000t of waste each year and the initial aim is to get on-site needs dealt with. Outlets include local motorway construction schemes, which can use the compost at roadside, but the medium-term could see higher quality compost being sold to vermiculturists and other sectors that have a heavy demand for organic compost.
“There are peaks and troughs throughout the year,” says Wallace, “although here it is more a case of the products changing through the seasons ñ the volume is relatively steady. We will monitor the system to ensure that the right liquidity passes through, with cardboard and chip wood added as and when necessary. The speed of the process can be controlled and the system is monitored remotely by computer. We are happy to take it gradually and achieve our primary goals first ñ whether we go further will depend on a number of factors.
“As landfill costs rise, this scheme will definitely save tenants money. We may also receive some grant funding, although we are not totally dependent on it.”
The Corporation of London has just renewed its waste disposal and cleaning contract for New Spitalfields, but has changed its supplier. Scandinavian multinational ISS Services has taken on the role, having won the contract because it has a waste management partner and presented a number of pertinent recycling initiatives.
“Under the new contract we are looking for far greater segregation of waste,” says the market's superintendent Mike Culverwell. “And we see potential for the sale of any products that would come back to amortise the contract costs and benefit the tenants. The new deal has only been running for a fortnight, so we won't see the benefits come through immediately, but within a year we will know if it is working.
“We generate more than 11,000t of waste a year at Spitalfields and 15 per cent of that was recycled last year,” says Culverwell. “With the increased costs brought about by the landfill directive we have to address this and recycle substantially more than in the past. Until now, the recycling has been limited to wood and cardboard, which is the easy bit, but now we are looking at ways of reprocessing organic waste and some plastics.
“We have looked around the country at other schemes and if they are successful in Manchester and Glasgow for instance, we will look into the viability of similar projects here. However, they are different markets in their size and make-up. In Glasgow, they are also looking to put non-market waste through the scheme, which we could not do in our position. Therefore the economies of scale might not be there. It is unlikely we would ever be able to reach a point where we covered the cost of the contract, as labour charges for segregation and cleaning in London are very high, but on a split contract ñ like the one at Covent Garden where cleaning and waste management are run separately, it would perhaps be feasible to cover the waste management and disposal costs.”
Ensuring the optimum utilisation of any on-site baling or compacting machinery would be a headache too, he adds. “This time of year, particularly with this weather, we are generating 60t a day or 300t a week of waste. In a cold January, that might go down to 100t a week. So, as we would have to cater for the worst-case scenario, vessels would undoubtedly be unused at specific times of the year. At the end of the day though, organic waste will not be going into landfill after 2004, so we know that we have to have an effective solution in place by then.”
New Covent Garden market has started segregating waste cardboard for baling and recycling. The market has also introduced a policy of not putting pallets into skips, but sending them to be chipped. There has already been a noticeable drop in the quantity of waste leaving the market.
The market has seen its volume of waste drop from 18,000t two years ago to 12,000t last year, according to deputy general manager of the Market Authority, Robin Hope. He has been investigating the best way to implement a new waste management scheme for 18 months and produced a waste strategy guidance document.
There is a new contractor in at Nine Elms too, although waste management and cleaning are split, and carried out by SITA and MacLellan International respectively. “Part of the contract details what we expect in cleaning and waste management standards,” Hope said. “We want to see enhanced waste management, with increased recycling, and we want to see the cost benefits going back to the people that do the work.”
A composting system will also be introduced, although as yet there is no room for it on-site. London firm Organically will run this system, with volumes increasing as the level of success of the venture becomes evident. “This will start in the next week or so,” says Hope, “mainly with the catering processors at first, as they produce a large proportion of the waste at high cost. If you are slicing a potato for instance, the waste disposal can cost as much as the original product.
“The problem area is plastic and we aim to get to grips with this problem in the future. What we have recommended is that there is a dedicated waste management facility on site to cover all areas. At the moment, it is not financially viable, but as landfill prices increase, I would expect for the facility to become viable within 2-3 years.”
Hope said that it is difficult to instill the discipline of waste segregation into wholesale traders. “The whole thing revolves around the co-operation of the tenants,” he said. “It [efficient waste management] has not traditionally been a part of their culture, but we have been working very closely with Philip Emanuel, chairman of the tenants' association, and he is right behind it as he sees the obvious benefits.
“A recycling officer will be on-site within the next four-six weeks and his primary job will be to visit each tenant and educate the management and staff around this issue and encourage a change of culture. The objective is to make it easier and cheaper for tenants to dispose of their waste, but they have to buy into this concept. The service charge this year was calculated on the assumption that there will be a saving in waste disposal costs. If there proves to be no saving, a surcharge would be added. “We took a bit of a shy as we don't know how it will work out,” says Hope. “Now it is down to the tenants and their will to co-operate.”
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