Farm waste recycling franchise sets up in Essex

Fertiliser firm Cropco, has bought a franchise from the Lincolnshire-based company AgriCycle, to start up a farm plastics and card recycling operation in Essex.

” The legislation is forcing the issue of recycling and it seemed obvious for us to do it. “
– John Poulton, Cropco Ltd
The new scheme will see Cropco offering their farm waste collection service to around 200 of its customers.

Under the New Agricultural Waste Regulations, farmers are obligated to dispose of their waste in a responsible manner, and have some responsibility for ensuring their waste is dealt with properly. The regulations came into force on May 15 2006, but farmers were given a year to register any exemptions, and are still allowed to burn pesticide containers until this May.

Cropco, which has received a small business development grant form Remade East, now collects materials including pesticide containers, vegetable packs and crop covering material, and has already signed up 40 customers.

The company bales up material at a sorting facility near Halstead in Essex before sending it for reprocessing, with all plastic being sent to a plastic recycling plant run by AgriCycle's at Bath Farm at Caenby in Lincolnshire.

John Poulton, owner and managing director of Cropco Ltd, said: “As we deliver and collect to farmers at the same time we are the most efficient collector there can be. The legislation is forcing the issue of recycling and it seemed obvious for us to do it.”

AgriCycle
AgriCycle, which takes material from 34 sites across the UK, runs one processing line for chemical containers and one for silage wrap and crop cover, which can process 10,000 tonnes of material a year. The resulting plastic is then sold for re-moulding.

Company founder and partner Robert Moore said: “Farmers are responding very well to the regulations and I am certain they will meet their obligations as they are naturally environmentally minded. However, in a survey we conducted in January we found that 80% of farmers had not yet done anything with their waste and an alarming number had not yet registered their exemptions.”

Mr Moore added that even though the regulations did not commit farmers to recycling their waste, it was a better long term solution, as landfill was running out.

He said: “It is not in the law that farmers have to recycle farm waste and farmers can put it in landfill if they like. But, as the Environment Agency says, all landfill sites in the East will be full by 2012 and farmers have a duty of care over their waste.”