Organics recycling firm New Earth Solutions has voluntarily suspended operations at its Sharpness Dock in-vessel composting facility in order to undertake major alterations to its odour abatement system.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com today (June 3), Peter Mills, commercial director at New Earth, explained that the problem arose from the existing odour abatement system at the site in Gloucestershire and it had opted to close it for two months in order to tackle the issue.
The Dorset-based company purchased the Sharpness Dock in-vessel composting (IVC) site from administrators in February 2009 after previous owner Bioganix went into administration (see letsrecycle.com story).
Upon acquisition of the site, Mr Mills said that New Earth had undertaken 100,000 worth of improvements to the existing system. However, he said that a vociferous minority of local residents had complained about odours emanating from the site.
Following discussions with Environment Agency, Mr Mills said New Earth had opted to suspend operations in order to undertake a massive expansion of the odour abatement system.
Mr Mills said: What happened is the Sharpness facility, which is not a New Earth one but a former Bioganix site, was acquired with all sorts of problems. When we acquired it we did a big refurbishment and got rid of some of the more exotic waste materials they were treating and we made the project viable.
But recently we have been struggling with the existing odour control system and the odour abatement. It is not our operation, it is the previous system.
Food waste
Mr Mills said that the issue had been exacerbated by an increase in the number of councils collecting food waste separately rather than commingled with other green waste. This, Mr Mills said, meant the ratio of food waste to garden waste was treated by the IVC had become imbalanced.
The Sharpness IVC primarily treats commingled green waste. In September 2010, it won a seven-year contract to treat 5,000 tonnes-a-year of food waste from Bath & North East Somerset council at the Sharpness facility (see letsrecycle.com story).
Commenting on the timetable of reopening the site, Mr Mills said that New Earth expects that the plant will be closed until July.
He said: We are locking the site down. We have produced a technical report with regards to the abatement system and what needs to be put in place and we anticipate that that will take two-to-three weeks to complete.
We will start to treat waste again in July but we will only really ramp up waste once we have fully assessed the abatement system again.
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