Tomorrow (July 10) will see the official launch of a service for Cambridgeshire, where it is working alongside the council and its PFI contractor Donarbon Waste Management, as well as Anglian Water, to provide a cooking oil recycling bank at each of the local authority's 10 civic amenity sites.
“We are always looking for innovative ways to recycle Cambridgeshire's waste and we know that residents and the environment will both benefit from this convenient service,” he added.
And, the initiative was also warmly received by Anglian Water, who estimate that it costs them more than £5 million a year to clear blockages caused waste vegetable cooking oil being put down sinks.
Anglian's Collette Nicholls said: “We applaud initiatives that help to stop any food waste going down the sink and we hope that our customers will take up this opportunity to recycle their waste cooking oil.”
Since the banks were installed two weeks ago, residents have been able to take their waste vegetable oil in a sealable container to a bank at their local CA site.
When the banks, which are provided free of charge by the company, are full, they are collected and taken to Living Fuel's plant at Hockwold, Thetford to be recycled and purified into LF100 fuel, which can be used to produce electricity.
Explaining the aims of the scheme, Living Fuel's commercial director, Adrian Venni, said: “Throwing away used cooking oil is a problem for two reasons – it clogs up drains and sewers, and it contains unused energy, which we cannot afford to waste.
“This initiative solves both problems at a stroke, and excitingly all those people returning their used cooking oil become active participants in the generation of renewable electricity and the reduction of carbon emissions,” he added.
Talks
The partnership with Cambridgeshire builds on Living Fuel's existing relationships with Suffolk county council and Norfolk county council, where it provides 18 banks, free of charge, for each of the local authorities to use for collections of household cooking oil.
And, a spokesman for the firm told letsrecycle.com that the Cambridgeshire service would be followed by announcements of similar agreements with other local authorities.
“We're in talks with several about the next step,” he explained. “We're installing in three London boroughs, with a couple of banks in each.”
However, he was unable to reveal the identity of the boroughs, explaining that an official announcement would be made soon.
The agreement with Cambridgeshire also sees Living Fuels branching out further from its core suppliers, as the spokesman explained: “The bulk of our suppliers tend to come from industry, large-scale users like hotel chains, but the people who've been left out of the loop are householders.”
And, while unable to comment on exact targets for the Cambridgeshire collections, he indicated that the Norfolk and Suffolk services had both been successful so far
“We started out without a particular target but we're all very pleasantly surprised, it has been good, it's growing quite quickly,” he said.
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