Written evidence submitted by the Bio Collectors (FOW0049)

Bio Collectors collects and recycles food waste using its own vehicles and Anaerobic Digestion (AD) plant based in Mitcham, London. We process more than 100,000 tonnes of the capital's food waste and generate energy that is fed back into the national grid. We operate the first biomethane plant in London that is capable of injecting "green"​ gas into the national gas grid. Additionally, we also make a digestate that is used as a fertiliser and is transported to local farmland around the Surrey area. We are passionate about the environment and reducing the impact that food waste has on the planet – for this reason we believe major changes need to be made to the way the UK collects and disposes of unavoidable food waste.

Executive summary

With food waste costing the UK more than £19bn a year (WRAP), as well as causing enormous damage to the environment, it is a problem that needs to be addressed. While it is vital to reduce to overall amount of food waste that is created in the UK, it is equally important that we improve the way we handle the unavoidable amount that can’t be repurposed or reused, such as banana skins, mouldy bread, apple cores and tea bags for example.

Four things need to be implemented in order for food waste disposal standards to improve. This is the only way that true environmental benefits can be achieved.

• Raise awareness of the waste disposal challenges associated with densely populated areas and move towards separate food waste collections, which will then go to anaerobic digestion plants. In London, just 18 of 33 councils currently operate separate food waste collections and we want to drive change and push this number up.
• We want all restaurateurs and retailers to support local food waste collectors and honour their responsibility to the environment. They should insist that local AD plants are used to recycle waste to achieve the most friendly and cost effective disposal method for their waste.
• We need to raise awareness of the waste hierarchy among businesses and those responsible for making waste management decisions within government. Sending food waste to incineration is not a step in the right direction and does not represent the step changed. We shouldn’t see any more food waste going up in smoke.
• We want to ensure that local plants are fully utilised before any food waste is transported out of the capital. Many businesses do not know where their waste goes after it leaves their property. Some collectors are transporting food waste hundreds of miles to AD sites. The focus on shopping locally and eating locally sourced food should extend to how we dispose of our food waste.

The state of food waste disposal in London

We operate in London, so our submission mainly provides evidence from the capital.

Local authorities within London are free to implement their own waste disposal measures, which are chosen after taking into account the size of the borough they are managing, the resources available to them and the cost implications. Some councils work in partnership with those in neighbouring districts. The South London Waste Partnership, comprising Kingston, Croydon, Sutton and Merton, is one such partnership. Each council puts forward two members to vote on issues, and differences of opinion mean change is slow. Three of the boroughs currently collect separate food waste, with Sutton yet to follow suit. Bio Collectors plant sits in Merton on the Sutton border in an area that does segregate – just 100 metres away from an area that does not. This is typical of the food waste collection situation in London, with all boroughs employing different systems.

A movement away from landfill in the London boroughs began in the early 2000s with Bexley quick off the mark to establish change. The south-east council initiated a pilot to collect separated food waste in 2002, which went borough-wide in 2004. According to current records, average collection a week sits at around 156 tonnes per week, including commercial waste. Before November 2015, material was taken to a transfer station in Crayford, where it was processed through in-vessel composting – still a preferred option by many councils. Since then, Bexley has decided to now take all its food waste to an AD plant in Essex.

Barnet followed suit with food waste collections starting in October 2006, retrieving around 6,000 tonnes across 102,000 households, which is then transferred to an AD plant in Dagenham. Ealing and Croydon are just two of the boroughs that have all made the move to AD, the latter via the South London Waste Partnership. Harrow and Hounslow are also setting this example, while the City of Westminster currently sends all its waste to incineration.

Many local authorities in London currently promote the fact that they use a method of composting to recycle their food waste. This is generally the case when garden and food waste is collected together. Waltham Forest is one borough that conducts its collections in this way. Since 2011, food and garden waste have been collected together in 140 or 240-litre bins, which are processed using in-vessel composting. Around 60,000 households take part, with an average of 9,000 tonnes of garden and food waste accrued each year.

East London, as a whole, is locked into a contract with the East London Waste Authority (ELWA) until 2027, meaning no changes can be made to waste disposal methods without incurring high costs.  The area comprises Redbridge, Newham, Havering and Barking and Dagenham, which collectively signed a 25-year contract with Shanks PLC, a leading waste management company in 2002. The boroughs have a combined population of around 870,000 living in over 340,000 households, and are each responsible for the collection of household waste in their areas. Approximately 450,000 tonnes of waste are delivered to ELWA by the boroughs each year for disposal. The deal with Shanks aims to increase the amount of waste being recycled and composted and reduce the amount sent to landfill, but there is much more that could be done. AD, for example, does not feature in planned improvements.

The Eunomia Research & Consulting June 2014 AD market update report states: “It will be appreciated that AD sits above incineration in the waste hierarchy, which presents a certain irony as many current local authority residual waste contracts disincentivise food waste collection and AD.

“In England, in 2012, around 40 percent of all residual waste was sent for incineration and that this residual waste might comprise up to 40 percent food waste, where no separate collection system was in place. Unless local authorities renegotiate contracts with their treatment suppliers, or unless they are required to change their approach to waste management, therefore, large amounts of food waste are likely to remain within the residual waste stream.”

Less than half of London’s food waste is processed in London. The majority of waste authorities send their separated green waste (garden and food) to composting and AD facilities outside London to counties including Kent, Surrey, Cambridgeshire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. Some food waste is treated in the Enfield, Hillingdon and Barking & Dagenham boroughs. This is despite AD capacity in London being only around half full. Food waste that is not separated is treated mostly within London’s boundaries at Energy for Waste and MBT facilities in Wandsworth, Lewisham and Bexley, while some landfill goes to Beddington Lane, Mitcham.

London requires facilities to process about one million extra tonnes of food and green waste. LWARB has identified that regional capacity gaps for municipal waste. SITA UK has estimated that for every one million tonnes of waste diverted from landfill, 10 and 20 new treatment facilities will be needed. These facilities would be built without government support if the supply of source-segregated food waste could be guaranteed.

The UK’s food waste AD capacity

The AD industry has grown rapidly and today there are around 107 dedicated waste plants in the UK. While the government is proposing to slash subsidies for new sites, we now have great capacity for processing food waste in this way. However, it does not automatically mean it is happening and experts believe the plants are, as a whole, only at around 50 percent capacity. Widely accepted as the ‘greenest’ method of recycling unavoidable food waste and higher up on the waste hierarchy than incineration, there is no reason that the huge capacity now available across the UK should not be utilised. Improper food waste segregation is the sole reason that this idle capacity exists. It is forcing collectors to seek out alternative methods of disposal, often at a higher cost financially and to the environment.

Incineration sits at the bottom of the waste hierarchy in terms of best practice for the environment, alongside using landfill sites. While waste management professionals are aware that landfill has become unfeasible from both an environmental and cost perspective, incinerating food waste should not be regarded as a step in the right direction. With food and drink accounting for 20 percent of the UK’s CO2eq emissions, the industry needs to look at much greener processes, and that all hinges on better separation of waste.

Some councils are still to introduce separate food waste collections to households in their areas, which means the majority simply send all their municipal waste to incineration plants. In London, two incinerator plants alone are burning thousands of tonnes of food and drink, simply because it is mixed with other domestic waste.

To put it into perspective, incinerators emit more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity (2988 lbs/MWh) than coal-fired power plants (2249 lbs/MWh). After promoting the use of burning waste, Denmark realised that the process was in fact releasing double the quantity of carbon dioxide than originally estimated. The evidence suggests that despite producing energy, the impact on the environment is predominantly negative.

So why are some councils continuing to use incineration? Is it because it’s easier to just lump everything in together, or is it because it’s too expensive to introduce separate collections? The government has granted permission over the last couple of years for heavy investment in anaerobic digestion (AD) plants to help reduce the impact of unavoidable food waste on the environment. Investors will have spent £10m or more on these plans and now the government needs to help and aid these plants to ensure that food waste is not going up in smoke.

The obstacles in London

Recycle for London, the partnership campaign between the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) and WRAP, is currently planning the next stages of its campaign to almost double recycling waste in the capital to 50 percent by 2020. Currently sitting at around 33 percent, the easier half has been achieved and there are multiple barriers to overcome to reach the target.

While London has made leaps in recycling since 2000, when recycling rates were in single figures nationally, it has now plateaued at around 33-34 percent. Industry insiders believe this figure is more likely to fall than rise, so further positive change is unlikely unless something shifts in consumer perception. Even within the councils that have sorted out their delivery services and integrated new systems, change requires more households to integrate it into their everyday lives.

Resource London is working with London boroughs and individual local authorities to look at best service and how to implement service change, but it faces major obstacles in achieving this. Nationally, even internationally, those trying to push change are up against a general perception that separating food waste is unpleasant. This is thought to be particularly true of residents in the so-called ‘posher’ areas of London, including the Kensington, Chelsea and Fulham areas. It is not a subject that consumers are receptive to, which makes the challenge a difficult one.

The biggest hurdle when it comes to London is simply that the capital is so vast and the population is growing with estimates reaching up to 10 million by 2020. The city is densely populated with as many as 80 percent of people living in flats in some boroughs. Rates of recycling become exponentially lower as the density of population increases. This is partly attitudinal and partly down to logistics – space for bin storage, maintenance of the bin area and access are all issues. Waste collection from flats is particularly challenging and few boroughs effectively separate food waste from these locations. In high rise buildings it also demands that residents repeatedly walk up and down stairs with bags of rubbish and it is easy to see why they may choose a simple life and keep all types of waste together for quicker disposal. As a whole across London, nearly half of all homes are comprised of flats and so improving food waste collection from these properties presents a great opportunity.

A further issue that makes changing recycling behaviour in London so difficult is that residents are so transient in the capital. According to Resource London, 32 percent of people in private rented accommodation moved in the last year with the majority staying in one place for less than two years. Home ownership statistics are low in London and the fact that people move so frequently means there is the possibility that they do not take the time to get to know the area in which they live in so far as bin collection services provided and the days they occur. The frequent moving of residents means that even relocating to just a street away places them in another borough with a completely different collection service.

Our research showed that most London boroughs contain residents speaking more than 100 languages, meaning that even were councils to implement separate regular food waste collections, communication could be an issue. A spokesperson for Recycling for London, a campaign managed by Resource London, told us: “Some would argue that one of the answers is to have a more consistent collection service across London, but that would be a massive political and financial undertaking and is unlikely to happen. DEFRA is looking at consistency and there is something in harmonisation. From a communications perspective, I think there is something to be said for London-wide communication.”

Local authorities in Wales have a blueprint for waste collection services whereby each one is supposed to follow the same schedule. A London-wide service could be the answer, but then implementation would come up against the same issues of cost, logistics and communication. However, recent analysis suggests there are cost savings in separate food collections contrary to the popular view. Bio Collectors can guarantee that businesses will see a cost saving when separating their food waste. On purely a gate fee basis, the saving is more than half the equivalent cost of landfill or incineration.

What’s happening elsewhere?

As it stands, policy on food waste across the EU is mixed, with Denmark leading the way when it comes to both environmentally-friendly disposal and the promotion of reducing food waste at source. This has largely been driven by the Stop Wasting Food campaign, an initiative that has played a pivotal role in changes in Denmark and more widely across Europe, having helped co-develop the EU’s Joint Declaration on Food Waste (October, 2010) in which the EU and UN committed to reducing food waste by 50 percent by 2025.

Founder of Stop Wasting Food, Selina Judd, told us: “We established the Stop Wasting Food movement through a Facebook group eight years ago at a time when there was no real discussion around food waste. Just two weeks after the group was made, we were in national media and three months later, we were approached by Denmark’s biggest discount retail chain REMA1000, which agreed to drop quantity discounts in all its Danish stores. After that, it completely took off and in just five years, Denmark's national food waste has been reduced by 25 percent.”

Work done in other countries also suggests that separate food waste collection schemes need not be more expensive, now may it be such a feat to collect waste from high rise buildings. Many innovative and cost-effective separate collection schemes have been implemented in the south of Europe and in some new EU Member States. Milan in Italy has achieved rates of between 80 and 90 percent of households, mostly in blocks of flats, which are now regularly separating their food waste.

What needs to be done?

Consumers must be better educated in the importance of food waste segregation, as well as the AD process. We must educate local authorities and businesses on the benefits of food waste recycling and encourage them to see the long term positive changes and cost savings that it brings. Businesses can, in turn, educate their employees and encourage change from within.

It is also vital to help people understand the difference between avoidable and unavoidable food waste, therefore reducing the overall amount in the disposal system. It must also be remembered that food waste that is disposed is turned into a rich fertiliser by-product during the AD process and is fed back into the system through use at local farms. This means no energy is wasted, no harmful by-products are produced and the whole cycle hugely benefits the local area.

Benefits of separate waste collection

• Businesses that choose to separate their food waste will benefit from a cost saving in waste disposal.
• In instances where councils have implemented food waste segregation, the volume of overall food waste will reduce.
• Councils and businesses alike will benefit from a green environmentally-friendly image when separating food waste and using AD as a disposal method.
• The capacity that the AD process has in creating energy for use either in the national grid or to be sold back to businesses means there are cost savings and green credentials to be made, as well as becoming less reliant on other nations for energy.
• The AD process produces a nutrient rich fertiliser that enhances farmers’ crops to a greater degree than its chemical counterparts.

September 2016