Choosing a Food Waste collection scheme …

12th September 2012

Presented @ RWM(2012)

Brian Mayne

Waste Management & Resource Efficiency

AEA

Who am I?

+ Waste & Resource Efficiency Consultant at AEA

+ Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management

+ CIWM Centre Councillor

+ Chartered Environmentalist

+ ISWA International Waste Manager International Status.

+ Expert Advisor to the National Assembly of Wales on waste management

+ Local Government & Consultancy background

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My sponsor - www.aeat.co.uk

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Why Food Waste?

+ Around 6.7 million tonnes of food waste is produced by UK households – that’s about one-fifth of total household waste. Collecting food waste separately for recycling offers a wide range of potential benefits, e.g.:

- contributing to targets for diverting biodegradable waste from landfill;

- improving recycling rates;

- reducing waste disposal costs as landfill costs increase;

- reducing environmental impacts associated with landfill (toxicity in leachate, landfill gas emissions, etc.);

- reducing greenhouse gas emissions by removing the putrescent content from landfill sites;

- production of compost and liquid fertilisers for use as a soil improver;

- generation of heat and power through anaerobic digestion (AD) linked to combined heat and power plant or through use as a direct fuel; and

- complementing alternate weekly collections of refuse by collecting the odorous fraction weekly. 4

Wider Context – The Jigsaw

+ Reduction makes sense

- Priority activity to save money & resources

+ Love Food Hate Waste Campaigns

+ Community Composting initiatives

- The Big Society

+ Renewable Energy Agendas

- AD feedstock

+ Agricultural Agendas

- Fertilisers

- Digestates

- Soil structures

+ But need good collection systems!

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Don’t forget prevention!

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Composition counts!

+ Links back to WHY food waste ….

+ Data is key for any decisions on future direction

- Strategy / service design

+ How much food waste do you have?

+ Does it warrant separate collection or ‘lose it’ with your garden wastes?

- Impacts on costs

+ NLWA waste composition

- Food waste = 28.5% in the waste stream!!

- Made it a priority to collect and treat separately ….

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Collection Options

+ Universal Service?

- All HHs get the same?

+ Kerbside

+ Bring banks

+ Bins?

+ Vehicles?

+ Manpower

+ And what about commercial properties?

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Options for collecting food waste

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• Collect food separately with bespoke vehicle

• Collect food separately but at the same time as other

wastes with a split bodied vehicle or a compartmentalised

vehicle

• Collect food and garden waste together in a single vehicle

Combined systems

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+ WRAP identified;

- Lower capture of food waste

- High captures of garden waste

- Residents disposing of food waste in the residual bin in the intervening week?

- Less willing to put food in the garden bin?

- Suitability of feedstock for treatment option

Bins & Caddies

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Bulking Food Waste

+ Why do it?

- Distance to treatment facility (>20km)

- Time to travel (> 40 mins)

- Transport costs (fuels)

- Environmental impacts of additional vehicle movements

- Joint Working (shared facilities) uncertainty

- Interim facility in use for short term

- Food waste trial under evaluation

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Thinking Holistically

+ The whole supply chain ….

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Collections Bulking Treatment

Considerations

+ Collection Vehicle Type

- Tipping operation will dictate bulking

- Stillage, pod, rear-end loader

+ Transfer Site space & cover

- Skips / vehicles/ tipping

+ Source segregated or Co-mingled

- Composition & Volume

+ ABPR compliance!

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Options Assessment

+ What options are you considering?

+ What criteria to use?

+ What weightings are important?

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Collection Options: Hackney

Population 216,000

Dwellings 101,189

51% estate based households

62% of street level properties are flats

Highly transient population

All 19 wards are in the most deprived nationally

52% BAME population

Changing demographic and housing stock

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Collection Options: Hackney

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Kerbside

• 7 & 21 litre caddies

• Weekly kerbside collections

• 51,000 properties (potentially)

• Sent to IVC

Estates

• 10 litre vented caddy

• Communal food waste bin

• Twice weekly collection

• 12,500 properties

• Expanded to 8,500 Jan 2012

• Liners provided

• Sent to IVC

Liners …

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The Liner Debate

+ On-going WRAP study headlines …

+ Residents like liners and they can increase participation BUT

- They can be expensive

- They need to be distributed regularly (direct or via a local network)

- May not be favoured by your treatment facility (contaminants)

+ If you consider using liners

- Make sure you get a good deal (2.5p per liner or less!)

- Try and buy in bulk for better value

- Limit the thickness (thicker liners cost more but may not be required)

- If you sell liners make sure you cover your whole costs…. 19

CBA for Liners in Hackney

+ Hackney kerbside liner trial

- participation up by 7.5%

- but would cost £121k per year

+ Estates – liner costs?

- £30k per annum!

- So not used!!!!!

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Roll Out

+ Big Bang Approach!

- Blanket deliveries

- Everyone changes at once

- Increased people @ call centre

- Home advisors on the streets

- Cheaper if it works (less people and less time involved)

+ Staged?

- Test the idea

- See how communications / media approaches work

- Learn lessons and update materials / messages

- Smaller team (employed for longer)

- Deal with confusion from areas ….

oon or off?

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9/17/2012 22

Roll Out in Hackney (1)

Kerbside

• Big Bang Approach

• Blanket deliveries

Estates

• 2 phased roll outs

• Door stepping delivery (2007)

• Blanket delivery (2010)

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Roll Out in Hackney (2)

• 10 liner roll starter pack given to all HHs • Initially a retail network for selling the liners

• Only 1 type allowed @ NLWA

• Shops were happy to be involved

• Some sold them above the advertised price

• London Waste have now relaxed this stipulation • residents can use any liner with the compostable logo on!

Communications 1

+ Literature

+ Displays

+ Help line

+ Website

+ Home advisors

+ Doorsteppers

+ Language issues

+ Graphics

+ Distribution methods

+ Roadshows

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Communications 2

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Phase 2

Setting the scene Telling residents what’s arriving

and when

Phase 3

Guidance How to use the

service

Set Up

Brand Content

Copy Design

Phase 1

Raising awareness

that the new scheme is on

its way

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Campaigning

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Addressing mis-conceptions

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9/17/2012 30

Communications in Hackney

Kerbside

Estates

Contamination

+ What can your processing facility cope with?

+ Liners or plastic bags?

+ Bones?

+ Food Packaging?

+ Stuff …..

+ How do you deal with it?

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Quality Feedstock ?

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Enforcement

+ Do you?

+ Would your political leaders support this?

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How do Residents React?

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+ One offs?

+ Feedback to HH’s?

+ Repeat Offenders?

+ Harder line tactics?

+ Messaging …..

+ Critical!

Monitoring 1

+ Data

- What do you need?

- How do you get it?

+ Participation rates?

- Need a monitoring protocol

+ Capture Rates?

- Service effectiveness…

+ Use data to target campaigns or service design / delivery

+ Validating data

- with other LA’s?

- with WRAP http://www.wrap.org.uk/local_authorities/research_guidance/food_waste/separate_food_waste.html

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Monitoring 2

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Data is important ….

+ Participation rates

+ Capture rates

+ Tonnages collected

+ Contamination

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Hackney’s data

+ Participation rate

- Estates = 14%

- Kerbside =25%

+ Capture rate

- Estates = 10%

- Kerbside = 12.5%

+ Tonnages collected

- Estates = 0.33 kg / hhld / wk (average across all households served)

- Kerbside = 0.48 kg / hhld / wk (average across all households served)

+ Contamination levels

- No loads rejected in the last 6 months

- Estates: crew monitor contamination on a ‘site basis’ and report back where problems exist; reinforced by waste team comms

- Kerbside: crew use contamination cards 38

Settling Down Period

+ Some residents will decrease their food waste arisings

- Visual impact of ‘wastage’

- New users come on line

- Old users stop

+ Be careful about the design of your system

- Too much / Too little capacity

+ Monitor and inform decisions

- Constant evolution …..

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Reinforcing the message - businesses

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Commercial Food Wastes

+ Is this the next BIG step?

+ Good News Stories exist

- The Savoy introduced food waste collection and it paid for itself in terms of avoided disposal costs!

+ But still not considered a ‘core opportunity’

- Price can be too high for SME’s (usually pay by volume not weight)

+ Need to look at joint collection points?

- SME joint collection trials (WRAP funded)

+ Business Improvement District joint procurement

- Buying power of a number of business

- Service tailored to their needs – sharing of bins etc.

+ The future might be co-collection with MSW….

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Commercial Food Waste Collections

+ You need to consider:

- What to collect ?

- When to collect ?

- Collection methods / options ?

- Operating costs ?

- Charging methodology ?

- Opportunity to sell liners and periodic cleaning of bins ?

+ Could C&I food waste collections be aligned with domestic collections?

+ Absolutely… it is a valuable raw material!!

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Commercial Food Waste Collections

+ You need to consider:

- What to collect ?

- When to collect ?

- Collection methods / options ?

- Operating costs ?

- Charging methodology ?

- Opportunity to sell liners and periodic cleaning of bins ?

+ Could C&I food waste collections be aligned with domestic collections?

+ Absolutely… it is a valuable raw material!!

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Costs

+ It is not possible to give a specific cost per tonne or cost per household figure for food waste collections as it will be different in each Authority. It will be affected by:

- number of loaders;

- local wage levels;

- if existing vehicles are utilised e.g. adding to an existing kerbside service or new vehicles are leased or purchased;

- requirement for any vehicle modifications;

- vehicle running costs and fuel;

- containers provided to residents (dependant on size and quality);

- type and number of liners provided to residents;

- round efficiencies in terms of size, set out rates, pass rates and crew productivity;

- level of capture or diversion achieved;

- communications approach adopted; and monitoring requirements. - http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/food_waste_collection_guidance_-_amended_Mar_2010.pdf 44

Costs (Kerbside Analysis Tool Chart)

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Food waste collection scheme (Costs)

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http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/food_waste_collection_guidance_-_amended_Mar_2010.pdf

In Summary

+ The thought process for a successful food waste scheme….

- Compositional analysis

- Collection options

- Cost Benefit Analysis

- Roll-Out

- Communications

- Contamination

- Monitoring

- Data usage

- Settling down

- Learning lessons (your and others) …

- Co-collecting with C&I food wastes ….

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Good Morning!

Find out more visit our stand (20-L69)