2m tonnes of composting capacity on the way

The Composting Association has published the results of its annual survey of the UK Composting and biological treatment industry for 2005/06 which revealed increased quantities of waste being composted with only a small percentage of this from kitchen waste.

The investigation, conducted by MEL Research on behalf of The Composting Association and Waste & Resources Action Programme, showed that for 2005/06, the industry 3.4 million tonnes of source segregated waste was composted in that time – helping the industry to achieve an estimated £90 million turnover.

In total, 85% of the waste composted in 2005/06 was municipal, with just under half coming from household kerbside collections and just over half coming from materials deposited at civic amenity sites.

But, less than 1% of the municipal waste composted was kitchen waste collected at the kerbside.

These figures are likely to increase, with the help of WRAP's 17 food waste trials (see letsrecycle.com story) which have been designed to encourage food waste recycling by local authorities.

Jeremy Jacobs, acting chief executive at The Composting Association, commented: “Although only a small proportion of biowastes composted were foods and animal by-products, survey respondents estimated that two million tonnes of new treatment capacity will become operational over the next five years, which signals local government and industry commitment to recovering higher proportions of these valuable secondary resources.”

Markets

The survey also revealed that over two million tonnes of compost products were produced, an increase of a third on the previous year.

And, a quarter of a million tonnes of compost each was used for horticulture and restoration purposes – these are higher end markets which the Quality Protocol for compost was designed to encourage (see letsrecycle.com story).

Agriculture still remains the largest market sector for source segregated compost and one million tonnes of compost was supplied to the sector in 2005/06, the majority of this, was used on arable and cereal crops.

Nearly half of this compost was sold, the majority direct to end users. About a third was used on the site of production and about a fifth distributed with no charge.

The survey received responses from 126 composting companies, which between them, ran 321 composting or biological treatment sites in 2005/06.

The amount of responses to the survey also enabled M.E.L to estimate that there were 1,200 full time employees working in the industry in 2005/06.