Good news on alternatives to incineration

A series of news items published on the Internet signal the shift away from incineration as a method for managing household waste. Lancashire is reportedly ‘delighted’ with the progress being made by contractor Global Renewables on the county’s £2 billion waste PFI, a year and a half after the contract came to financial close and Defra has found some pennies (£10 million) to help promote anaerobic digestion (AD).

The 25-year Waste PFI contract, valued at £2 billion, was signed between Lancashire County Council, Blackpool County Council and Australian firm Global Renewables in March 2007. Global Renewables is reportedly on target to deliver two sites capable of handling over 600,000 tonnes of household waste a year by the planned date of 2010.

According to LetsRecycle: “Work on facilities at Leyland near Preston and Thornton near Blackpool is continuing with steelwork now up on the 12 hectare Thornton site and cladding about to take place. Once complete, the two facilities will use non-thermal “Urban Resources – Reduction, Recovery and Recycled” (UR-3R) technology to process mixed residual waste into biogas fuel and compost”.

Note how thermal treatments are excluded from the plans! 305,000 tonnes of garden and kitchen waste, kerbside-sorted recyclables and residual waste is to be reclaimed or turned into renewable energy and compost.

Work on facilities at Leyland near Preston and Thornton near Blackpool is continuing with steelwork now up on the 12 hectare Thornton site and cladding about to take place. Once complete, the two facilities will use non-thermal “Urban Resources – Reduction, Recovery and Recycled” (UR-3R) technology to process mixed residual waste into biogas fuel and compost…Upon admittance to the £125 million facility, the garden and kitchen waste will be sent for composting, while the recyclables will sent to a MRF. The residual waste will be delivered to a reception hall, where the UR-3R technology recovers the inorganic material from the residual waste before the mainly organic remains are sent to percolators to be washed before being sent for composting.

And Defra are reporting that Anaerobic digestion is the ‘way forward’. Ludlow’s AD plant, which takes food waste from the town and turns it into electricity and compost, was described as ‘the way forward’ by Minister for Waste, Joan Ruddock when she visited the site last week.

The plant is part of Defra’s £30 million New Technologies Demonstrator Programme which tests innovative technology that could offer alternatives to landfill.  According to Defra, “the Ludlow partnership attributes some of its success to good communication with the local community, which has led to 70% of residents taking part in the voluntary food waste collection scheme which supplies the plant”. Defra suggest that: “at its full potential it is thought anaerobic digestion could produce enough electricity to power 2 million homes”.

Defra is now making a further £10 million available for a programme to test the full range of applications and benefits of anaerobic digestion. This will be delivered through a capital grant competition run by the Waste and Resources Action Programme with assistance from the Carbon Trust. Between three and six projects will be selected, and bids will be invited in the autumn. Anyone interested can register for more information at: www.wrap.org.uk/ETF

And Waitrose is claiming to be the first supermarket in Britain to run trials of anaerobic digestion (AD) with waste from five of its stores as part of a drive to divert food waste from landfill and generate renewable power. According to LetsRecycle, Food waste is collected from stores in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire and taken to the Milton Ernest-based AD facility, where Biogen treats the waste at their 42,000 tonne capacity plant which has been in operation since 2005.

See a short BBC film clip on AD in Shropshire

Also, Reuters is reporting that “a dramatic rise in the value of old plastic is encouraging waste companies across the world to dig for buried riches in rotting rubbish dumps”. The article quotes Chris Dow, managing director of the first so-called “closed loop” recycling plant in Britain able to recycle plastic bottles to a standard high enough for re-use as food packaging.

Dow is convinced there is value buried in rubbish dumps, but angry that talk has turned to investing in technologies to harvest it rather than focusing on stopping more plastic from being dumped now. “Just imagine the resources that are lying in those landfills — it could be incredible,” he told Reuters.

“But the insane thing is that we are talking now about investing millions into tapping into a resource under the ground, when the real tragedy is that every week we’re still dumping tonnes and tonnes of plastic into more landfills. It’s an act of vandalism against the environment.”