The company, which works with councils in and around West London at its site near Harefield, Middlesex, had its waste management licence suspended last week after odours problems.
Later last week the site was allowed to reopen after owners submitted an improvement plan to the Agency. But a spokeswoman for the company said it is now sending its commercial food waste collections to landfill, as the company believes this material may have been the root of the problem.
Residential
She said: “The site is still accepting food waste from household collections, but we have stopped composting the commercial food waste, which makes up about 5% of the 200 tonnes a day we take in, as this may have been where the odours arose from.”
While other companies are composting commercial food waste without serious odour issues, West London Composting believes commercial food waste causes odours because it is ‘denser’.
“The site has been open for a year and we have been composting this material the entire time. We don’t really know why there have been odour problems now, but there were a few hot stagnant days around the time the site was shut down,” the spokeswoman added.
The company considers that there is no other option than for the material, which mostly comes from restaurants and hotels in and around London, to go to landfill.
“The government estimates that that about 30 to 60 more food waste facilities are needed in and around London. Sites are in short supply, there is no where else for this to go at the moment other than landfill,” said the spokeswoman.
Notice
WLC was originally served a notice to ensure emissions to air were free from odour problems at its site early in August. Just under a month later on 6 September the notice expired.
Emma Cassidy, press officer for The Agency said that at this time: “bad odours of compost were confirmed by Environment Agency officers”.
On 13 September, the Agency issued another notice suspending the company’s waste management licence because of the continuing odours.
Ms Cassidy explained: “The company was told that if they provided a written plan of works to be undertaken to resolve the odour problem beyond the measures they take
routinely as part of their normal operations and the Environment Agency approves this plan, the suspension notice could be lifted.”
The following day the Agency received a revised action plan. The press officer explained: “Specifically and the most far reaching point of the plan, although not
the only point is that West London Composting have suspended the reception for composting of commercially collected food waste.
“They will monitor this over the next three months to see if there is a significant reduction in odour creation. We are now satisfied that the conditions of the original notice have been met,” she concluded.
Odour neutraliser
The company said that odours from the site have now disappeared thanks to some tweaking of its odour abatement system, the Airborne 10, which neutralises odours.
The company has sought advice from various parties, including the Composting Association, which it is a member of and is working towards the Association’s minimum composting standard PAS 100.
Tony Breton, communications manager at the Association said: “Some level of odour is inevitable from any treatment process. But making sure all measures are correctly in place and scrubers and biofilters are working will help.”
He added that in summer, there were higher levels of nitrogen in compost which potentially could create more odours, particularly in hot weather.
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