The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is offering the free collection of waste cooking oil from businesses after recognising the growing value of the commodity for use in biodiesel production and as fuel in power stations.
The council receives no financial reward for being the middle man in this process, but in terms of street scene appearance it's win, win for us
Councillor Nicholas Paget-Brown, Royal Borough of Kensingston and Chelsea
With the distribution of 600 leaflets to local businesses explaining the service, Kensington and Chelsea will offer catering companies the chance to dispose of their waste cooking oil safely and legally, as part of a partnership with Enfield-based oil recycling firm Pure Fuels.
Promotion of free oil collection in the West London borough comes in the wake of other councils – such as Ealing, Great Yarmouth, Nottinghamshire and Thurrock – promoting the services of local waste oil collectors in a bid to increase the amount of surplus oil collected from the catering industry.
Leaflets
The borough council – which receives no financial gain from the service – will distribute leaflets to businesses over the next two to three weeks with the collections due to begin immediately, and the council intends to include the oil collected in its Best Value performance indicator recycling statistics.
Councillor Nicholas Paget-Brown, Kensington and Chelsea cabinet member for the environment, said: “The scheme is now being offered all over the borough and expected to be extremely popular. We are currently working on a process of collection statistics from the waste oils collected from the businesses that will be added to our recycling figures for best value recycling purposes.”
Having run a trial of the service from September to December 2007, the borough approached a number of businesses and managed to salvage in excess of 3,000 litres of waste cooking oil over the three months, which Pure Fuels were then able to turn into biodiesel at its production facility to the north of the capital.
Collection
Catering establishments are bound by a duty of care enforced by the Animal By-Product Regulations Act 2004, which lays down stringent guidelines on the legal disposal of animal-derived waste cooking oil, and so the council took the initiative to offer businesses the free service.
Following a meeting at the Kensington and Chelsea ‘Environment Day' in 2007, the council struck up a partnership with biofuel producers Pure Fuels and Green Miles Fuels – a collection service operated by Quenton Kelley who shares a work site with Pure Fuels.
Mr Kelley supplies businesses across the capital with receptacles and then returns after a couple of months to collect the accumulated oil before returning it to Pure Fuels depot in Enfield for bio fuel production.
In the partnership deal, the council promotes Mr Kelley's collection service to local businesses and then he reports his collection quantities to Kensington and Chelsea, which is then able to include the recovered oil in its own recycling figures.
Cllr Paget-Brown said: “Quenton was already working in the borough collecting from certain establishments but was looking for a way to gain access to more oil, and more businesses.”
Trial
Scott Wilson, head of commercial waste management at the council, highlighted that collection of waste cooking oil is not a new idea and mentioned that a number of businesses will already have collections in place but hoped to get businesses which didn't to come forward by promoting the scheme.
He told letsrecycle.com: “Response to any free collection service is always pretty good. The one thing that everyone doesn't realise is that there are a lot of collectors and there are 25 collectors in and around the borough at any one time.”
Other councils have previously used the services of an independent collector to facilitate waste cooking oil collection for various reasons – from improving the streetscape to improving the council sewer systems, which can be irrevocably damaged by waste cooking oil disposed down drains.
In December 2007, Ealing council ran a trial of a number of businesses in Southall to help oil to be safely disposed of, due to reports by Thames Water claiming that it had had to clear 70,000 sewer blockages in 2007, 60% of which were deemed to be caused by fat, oil and grease.
The service the council introduced – using Twickenham-based Proper Fuels – was well-received and expanded beyond its original 100 businesses to go city-wide on March 1 2008 and has since collected 4,960 litres of waste cooking oil. Saving a saleable commodity and stopping the damage it was causing on drainage systems from improper disposal.
Clean
Following the three month trial at the end of last year, the council hopes that the free oil collections will limit the ill effects spilt and wrongly disposed oil can have on the borough's street scene, with the council highlighting that there is no monetary gain for them in this process.
Cllr Paget-Brown said: “The council for many years had been blighted by stained pavements, due to oil spillage from bags, or worse customers discarding waste oils in the back of our dustcarts. Both practices are highly unpopular in the borough.
“The council receives no financial reward for being the middle man in this process, but in terms of street scene appearance it's win, win for us,” added Cllr Paget-Brown.
Subscribe for free