News in Brief

Chelsea Flower Show recycles with Powerday

The UKs leading gardening charity said it takes recycling seriously at the worlds most famous flower show which attracts over 150,000 visitors during the five days. All waste generated in the build-up and take-down, as well as during the show, is taken to Powerdays materials recycling facility (MRF) just a few miles away in Willesden Junction.

Powerday has worked with the RHS providing the recycling and waste management services to the Chelsea Flower Show since 2009. Cardboard and glass are segregated on-site with the remaining waste including wood, soil and food waste separated at the MRF. What cant be recycled is processed into refuse derived fuel (RDF) and sent to an energy-from-waste plant to generate electricity.

Lynsey Wollaston, operations manager at the Chelsea Flower Show, said: Powerday’s facilities allow us to segregate all of our waste in the most effective methods offsite and achieve a recycling rate of over 95%. We are working towards improving the shows environmental position and Powerday continues to work with us to review our recycling data and improve our waste streams, enabling us to move forward.

Over a billion pounds raised in landfill tax last year

Over a billion pounds was raised in 2011/12 through landfill tax, according to new figures from the Treasury.

The data shows that 1.1 billion was raised in 2010/11 and 2011/12 and this is forecast to rise to 1.2 billion in 2013/14, 1.5 billion in 2014/15 and 1.6 billion in 2015/16.

The figures emerged last month (July 16) as the Treasury published a new definition of environmental taxes to help measure progress against the Coalition Agreement pledge to increase the proportion of revenue that comes from environmental tax. According to the Treasury, environmental taxes are those where:

• The tax is explicitly linked to the Governments environmental objectives;
• The primary objective of the tax is to encourage environmentally positive behaviour change; and
• The tax is structured in relation to environmental objectives, for example: the more polluting the behaviour, the greater the tax levied.

Alongside landfill tax, environmental taxes identified by the Treasury are: the Climate Change Levy; Aggregates Levy; EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS); Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme; and, Carbon Price Support.

In 2011/12, 3.1 billion was raised by these taxes in total, the largest proportion of which came from landfill tax.

Energos technology to feature at Glasgow site

Energos technology is set to feature in a residual waste treatment plant being proposed in Glasgow.

The gasification technology is to be used by waste management company Viridor as part of a three-stage residual waste treatment process at its proposed 146 million Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre (GRREC) at Polmadie. The technology will be used alongside advanced recycling and anaerobic digestion technologies.

The Polmadie facility is being developed under the 254 million contract signed between Glasgow council and Viridor last month (see letsrecycle.com story). A planning application is expected to be made towards the end of summer with a view to securing planning consent in early 2013.

The Viridor facility will radically overhaul the way Glasgow’s residual household waste is managed over the next 25 years – handling between 175,000 and 200,000 tonnes of council green bin waste every year.

Nick Dawber, managing director of Energos, said: “Energos is pleased to be an integral part of the proposed Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre and we look forward to being part of an environmentally responsible, small scale local solution for local waste that would otherwise fill up landfill.”

Burges Salmon assists Gwynedd with AD contract

Lawyers from Burges Salmon have advised Gwynedd council on a public-private partnership (PPP) contract with anaerobic digestion (AD) specialist BiogenGreenfinch to develop an 11,000 tonne-a-year capacity AD facility at a former landfill site at Llwyn Isaf in North West Wales.

This project (Prosiect GwyriAD) marks a major milestone in the Wales-wide procurement hub initiative and, once operational, will divert household food waste and a significant tonnage of commercial and industrial food waste from landfill. It will also produce renewable energy for the national grid and digestate for fertiliser.

The planned facility, due to start treating the council’s waste in 2013, will be designed, constructed, operated and maintained under a 15-year contract. It will be the first AD facility in Wales specifically designed to take local authority source-segregated food waste. It has the potential to generate enough electricity annually for around 750 homes, as well as produce a valuable biofertiliser for use on nearby farmland.

The Burges Salmon team was led by senior associate Nick Churchward and director Nigel Campbell assisted by a team including solicitor Sam Sandilands and associate Kelly Loft.
Gwyn Morris Jones, head of highways and municipal at Gwynedd council, said: Gwynedd council has been fortunate in attracting Welsh Government support for Prosiect GwyriAD and in having established an excellent team to ensure delivery of the project comprising of Burges Salmon (legal), Grant Thornton (financial) and AMEC to advise on technical issues.

Merseyside Textile Forum launched

A new focus group has been set up to stop thousands of tonnes of clothes going to landfill.

The Merseyside Textile Forum has been established in a bid to prevent the estimated 22,000 tonnes of the regions clothes and textiles from ending up in landfill sites every year.

The Forum is being headed by Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority (MRWA) and has been set up for local charities and stakeholders who currently collect textiles, with support from all of Merseysides district councils and the national Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

The principal aim of the Forum is to identify and support ways to increase the recycling and reuse of textiles. A strategy for incentivising landfill diversion is currently being developed. The Forum will look at current collection methods and markets for reuse and recycling for textiles and clothes of all quality grades.

Councillor Joe DeAsha, chairperson of MRWA, said: People have got the hang of recycling and preventing waste in the first place, but there is still an issue with clothes. Thousands of tonnes end up in landfill every year and most of this will still have a value, whether its by donation to a charity or using the raw material to create something new.

Hopefully the focus of this new Forum will see us reduce that 22,000 tonne figure.”