Weather causes havoc but compost sector is set for new season

The new season comes after one of the wettest 12 months on record which has caused a sharp increase in the amount of material available along with operational difficulties for many composting businesses.

Simon Lupson of Hertfordshire-based EQ Waste Management said that the composting industry had seen a very quiet winter. “I think the wet weather has meant about a 30% difference in levels of business. We are looking forward to the Easter weekend which marks the official start of the season and are looking for some recovery in activity. Already order levels are starting to rise.”

Another composting company in southern England said that the winter period “had been a complete disaster. With the majority of composting still carried out in open windrows it has been very hard to screen material and the only way to keep the composting process going to is to keep turning material.”

Composting-expert Charlie Trousdell of Sussex-based TJ Composting said that while the weather had created real problems for many businesses, there was a growing interest in the sector.

“Local authorities are looking to compost more material all the time and there is concern to ensure that composting is carried out properly and to stringent criteria.”

Directive

Mr Trousdell said that this should mean that 2001 becomes a busy year as far as the composting is concerned once the wet weather eases up. “You have to see the impact of the EU directive which prohibits biodegradable municipal waste going to landfill and at a cost people will have to comply with it.”

But, while input into composting plants will rise as more material is collected, Mr Trousdell warned that selling can prove difficult. “The only really viable market is agriculture and more and more farmers are unwilling to pay very much. The industry has to work very hard to convince the agricultural market that we are producing a quality soil conditioner that is worth the money.”

One problem that the industry faces in selling to farmers, said Mr Trousdell, is that historically the quality of material has not been very good and in the early years farmers were left unimpressed. Nowadays the situation has changed especially with the work by the Composting Association to introduce standards.”

Warm summer


Exactly how much material becomes available for composting this year is in part down to the weather and Trevor Coultan of Midlands-based Envirotech said that if there is a warm summer “a lot of compost will be produced partly because more and more companies are getting into compost. There is already a lot of compost sitting on the ground. A nice summer will exacerbate the problem as everything will grow like crazy.”

Composting Awareness Week runs later this month from April 29 to May 5. Vicki Woods, communications officer for the
Composting Association , said that schemes and open days were taking place across the UK. Further details are available on the association's relaunched website.