LAWR

ENERGY RECOVERY Is the £3m Gov loan scheme, specifically for AD adequate? What more could be done to enhance competition, growth and investment in the sector? This assumes that AD is the right answer and should thus be incentivised over other solutions, I am not sure this is entirely true, there is still a role for in-vessel composting (IVC). However, on the £3m loan, it is not really enough to make the level of change required happen. Capex for new AD facilities will quickly eat up such figures, and given the lack of long-term secured contracts for organic waste the economics of AD can be difficult for funders to commit too. If we really want AD to blossom then more help centrally would be essential, just like the PFI deals helped secure new municipal waste infrastructure in the recent past. To what extent has the Government's commitment to AD impacted on alternative waste-to-energy recovery schemes, such as gasification and refuse derived fuel (RDF)? Government policy support and to a lesser degree funding support has clearly made AD more popular than other organic treatment options, IVC included. However, RDF linked to mechanical biological treatment (MBT) has been quite a success in the last three or four years with significant volumes of materials being processed for use in thermal facilities – the only problem has been that 1m tonnes has been going out of the UK to facilities, thus not benefitting UK infrastructure as commentators would have hoped five years ago when the swing towards MBT and RDF really kicked off. With landfill tax still going up, what are the prospects for international exchanges of refuse becoming financially viable, and what impact will growth in this area have on local landfill businesses and wider energy recovery sector? International exchange of materials is already happening, whether it be RDF to Europe, plastics to India or paper to China, we live in global commodity trading. There will not however be an international trade in 'refuse' or rubbish, as this is illegal under the Basel Convention, so processing rubbish prior to export will still be essential. 18 Local Authority Waste & Recycling March 2014 Creating value from waste Ricardo-AEA resource efficiency and waste management practice director Adam Read will be speaking on Day Two's (2 April) seminar session on AD's role in energy recovery. Here, he assesses the Government's efforts to increase the use of AD in this mini Q&A session. Prestressed Concrete Retaining and Storage Walls w w w . a c p - c o n c r e t e . c o . u k ACP (Concrete) Ltd Manufacturers & Suppliers sales@acp-concrete.co.uk Tel: 01889 598660 Fax: 01889 568160 Part of the Thomas Armstrong Group of Companies Silage Clamps Tanks Bund Walls Bulk Retaining Waste Transfer Storage Bunkers Security Walls Arrow Panels CE Marked Fuels from plastics explored On Day Three (3 April), Axion Consulting senior engineer Sam Haig will report on the current state of development of processes and solutions for using plastics not suitable for recycling, which would otherwise be landfilled. Here, he gives LAWR readers a taster of his eagerly-awaited seminar. Recovering post-consumer flexible plastic films for direct reuse can be problematic because of the wide range of different plastic types, applications and formats. This can result in a mixed, contaminated fraction that is unsuitable for existing mechanical recycling methods, which rely on a relatively uncontaminated feed. The current disposal routes for this unrecoverable material are incineration or landfill. The latter is widely considered to be an unacceptable option; however, incineration of plastics also has several issues, not least the release of 'long-life' fossil carbon into the atmosphere, while recovering only a fraction of the potential energy. An alternative method is to change the plastic mixture into a reusable product via a chemical process. As most plastic is originally created from crude oil, the simplest and most 'closed-loop' solution is to create oil products that can be reused to make more plastic, as a fuel (which can be burned more efficiently than the original mixture), or in another application. See Haig speak at the'Plastics surgery' seminar from 14.05pm. WASTE CRIME ANALYSIS We've all heard about football bungs but it is rare to hear the term used in relation to the waste industry. A recent survey published by BusinessWaste.co.uk caused a stir last month when it claimed that a tiny proportion of companies were 'bribing' council waste operatives to treat their commercial waste as household waste. Liz Gyekye finds out if waste crime is on the rise? ommercial waste firm BusinessWaste. co.uk carried out an anonymous survey and claimed that a small but significant number of companies were negotiating deals at their "back doors" in order to save substantial sums on their waste removal for as little as a few drinks down the pub. BusinessWaste.co.uk spokesman Mark Hall says: "In tough financial times, some business owners are cutting corners on their budgets and if they find an illicit way to have commercial or bulky waste taken away for next to nothing, they'll certainly take advantage of it." In a strictly confidential survey of 4,500 UK-based businesses, just over 1% admitted to disposing of their waste through illicit means. Among the common excuses were: "We took commercial waste home and put it in our domestic bins and we paid the bin man a tenner to remove loads of bulky waste." Speaking to LAWR, Hall says that businesses should be named and shamed if they are caught paying bin men "bungs" to remove their commercial waste and treat it as household waste. He adds: "The threat should be on the business. They should be audited and ranked on the waste they dispose of. The public will end up dealing only with ethical companies rather than those who don't give two craps about the environment." LAWR understands that the majority of commercial waste is collected by private waste contractors and not local authorities. Industry expert Peter Jones says that local authorities tended to back out of commercial arisings five years ago because they often lacked the information technology to invoice rising gate fees. The majority of their accounts were fruit and vegetable markets, general markets and small to medium-sized high street retailers. However, Hall has urged councils to crack down on alleged waste crime. So, what are local authorities doing to prevent these alleged practices? LARAC chair Andrew Bird says that local authorities take issues around fraud very seriously, and what is being described is fraud. He adds: "Unfortunately, a small number of businesses and people will always try to avoid having to correctly dispose of their waste in an attempt to save costs, or because they feel waste is someone else's problem. C March 2014 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 19 Stamping down on bin man 'bribery'

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