Final Report The Business Case for Wood Waste Collection Hubs - … case for wood... · 2019. 5....

Final Report

The Business Case for Wood

Waste Collection Hubs

A review of current collection routes for wood waste in England & Wales which assesses their effectiveness, and reviews the prospects for further increasing wood recovery using wood waste collection hubs to supplement the existing wood waste supply chain.

Project code: EFI001-003

Research date: 2011 – 2012 Date: August 2012

The Business Case for Wood Waste Collection Hubs 1

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Executive summary

1.0 Executive Summary This report sets out the findings of a research project undertaken to identify and evaluate possible options for the

collection of wood waste for recovery which might contribute to increasing the total amount of wood waste

recovered1. It particularly seeks to identify the scope for ‘Collection Hubs’ – additional points at which wood

waste can be collected before recovery within the wood waste supply chain.

The key objectives of the report are to:

Evaluate the business case for wood waste collection hubs in four specified scenarios.

Summarise evidence on quantities of wood waste, how it is currently managed and the end markets it

reaches.

Set out key drivers and constraints influencing the recovery of wood waste, including regulatory,

economic and practical, summarising the main barriers to investment.

Recommend steps to support the development, or further optimisation, of the wood waste supply chain.

1.1 Collection scenarios for wood waste

Within this overall economic and market context, current wood waste management methods and collection

scenarios are reviewed and described and their relative importance is indicated. From this full list, four collection

scenarios are selected for further investigation and production of a more detailed business case and assessment

of potential opportunities. These four scenarios are:

Wood recovery in composting – it has been identified that many larger scale composters already

receive significant tonnages of wood waste, and are likely to have the sites and facilities that might be

suitable for wood recovery. The current fate of wood waste managed by composting facilities was

explored, along with a review of the options for composters wishing to provide collection points for wood

recovery.

Local Authority Civic Amenity Recycling Centres (CA) – with an increasing focus on small

business recycling services, the current network of CAs are likely to provide suitable collection points for

non-domestic wastes, including wood waste. Current non-domestic waste activities and charging

approaches now operating in CA sites were evaluated to draw conclusions about the possibilities of using

these sites as collection hubs for wood wastes.

Collection clusters for SME wood businesses – Skip based collections are the main route for

recovery of wood waste to be cost effective. It was noted that little is known about the fate of wood

waste arising from smaller businesses which do not produce sufficient wood waste to make skip based

collections viable. With a large number of small wood businesses operating, the option of collection

clusters was explored, this is based on undertaking collection rounds using commercial bins for collection

of wood waste.

Reverse logistics for wood sector businesses – The options were reviewed for the use of reverse

logistics (i.e., back-loading) collections where deliveries of wood products to wood sector businesses

were matched with a service for the collection and back haulage of wood wastes. This enables wood

suppliers to provide a collection hub to aggregate larger quantities of wood for supply to other markets,

or to use as feedstock or fuel themselves, where the cost of recovering the waste wood directly from

customers would be higher.

1 For the purposes of this report the term recovery should be understood as including recycling and energy recovery.


1.2 Conclusions

The report concludes that:

The current wood waste recovery infrastructure operates efficiently to recover high proportions of wood

waste from the material available. Where wood waste is currently disposed of without realising its

monetary and/or energy value, this is likely to be a result of uneconomically viable recovery routes, due

to material contamination, mixing with other wastes or arising in quantities too small to allow for cost

effective collection.

There is generally sufficient total demand for wood waste where it is collected, providing its price and

condition meets the basic expectations of end users. Most producers who do not recycle or recover

wood produce small quantities where there may be no economic benefit to them of recycling, and the

cost of arranging recycling can be high.

Perceived levels of reduced enforcement of the current regulatory requirements may be limiting

behavioural change within the industry. Recycling small quantities of wood is unlikely to deliver cost

savings for small waste producers, and without an obligation or economic incentive, there is a potential

market failure in which low grade wood in small quantities remains unrecovered.

There may be opportunities for composters to operate wood collection hubs, but this is likely to be

dependent on local circumstances, the permitting status of their site and supply and demand factors.

This approach is used successfully already by some composters who tend to either produce wood

products for sale such as mulches and equine surfaces, but could also provide a primary collection point

for material that is then processed, graded and sold by wood recycling specialists in the existing supply

chain.

The provision of recycling services to small businesses through CAs (possibly, but not necessarily, on a

fee paying basis) could be widely applied throughout the UK to recover wood waste from many small

producers, particularly in the construction and demolition sector, as well as generating a possible income

stream for Councils. This is likely to support the recovery of additional tonnages of low grade wood

material which would otherwise be disposed of to landfill. This approach is unlikely to compete with

existing collection routes as individual quantities would be small.

Increased collection activity through collections from small businesses and through reverse logistics

methods can be viable in principle, but only where significant numbers of businesses can be recruited

rapidly enough to make the service viable. The difficulty in recruiting enough businesses to these

approaches makes this unlikely to succeed without significant changes in market conditions, or through

interventions. The main barriers are the additional cost and effort of separating smaller quantities of

wood for recycling.


Contents

1.0 Executive Summary .................................................................................................................... 2 1.1 Collection scenarios for wood waste ...................................................................................... 2 1.2 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 3

2.0 Introduction & Aims ................................................................................................................... 5 3.0 Available Quantities of Wood Waste .......................................................................................... 6

3.1 Published sources on wood waste arisings ............................................................................. 6 3.2 Changes in wood waste treatment and disposal routes over time ............................................ 7 3.3 Geographical breakdown of wood waste arisings .................................................................... 8

4.0 The Practicalities of a Wood Waste Collection Hub. ................................................................ 10 4.1 Grades of recovered wood ................................................................................................. 10 4.2 Sorting Processes .............................................................................................................. 10 4.3 Waste Codes for Wood Waste ............................................................................................ 10

5.0 Current Management Methods and Collection Scenarios ........................................................ 12 6.0 Scenarios selected for detailed analysis .................................................................................. 13

6.1 Wood waste supply chain mapping ..................................................................................... 14 7.0 Reviewed Scenario 1: Wood Recovery in Composting ............................................................ 16

7.1 Compost producers processing wood waste. ........................................................................ 16 7.1.1 Tonnage of wood inputs to composting processes ................................................... 16 7.1.2 Fates of wood wastes received by composters ......................................................... 17 7.1.3 Issues involved in wood recycling by composters ..................................................... 18 7.1.4 Conclusions .......................................................................................................... 18

8.0 Reviewed Scenario 2: Civic Amenity Recycling Centres (CA sites) ........................................ 20 8.1 The existing network of CAs ............................................................................................... 20 8.2 Findings: .......................................................................................................................... 20

8.2.1 Environmental Permitting and planning requirements ............................................... 21 8.3 CAs which are currently available for use for trade waste ...................................................... 23 8.4 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 23

9.0 Reviewed Scenario 3: Collection Clusters for SME Wood Businesses .................................... 24 9.1 Description of the sector .................................................................................................... 24 9.2 Waste management options for SME wood businesses ......................................................... 25 9.3 Geographic Locations of wood businesses ........................................................................... 25 9.4 Process for assessment of quantities ................................................................................... 27 9.5 Attitudes in the SME wood sector ....................................................................................... 27 9.6 Collection Clusters ............................................................................................................. 28 9.7 Case Study - Wood Yew Waste ........................................................................................... 29 9.8 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 29

10.0 Reviewed Scenario 4: Reverse Logistics for Wood Sector Businesses. ................................. 30 10.1 Howarth Timber ................................................................................................................ 30 10.2 Duffield Timber ................................................................................................................. 31 10.3 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 32

11.0 Summary of opportunities ........................................................................................................ 33 11.1 The organic waste composting sector.................................................................................. 33 11.2 Local Authority CA sites ..................................................................................................... 33 11.3 SME Businesses in the Wood Manufacturing and supply sector .............................................. 33 11.4 Recovery of wood through take back schemes ..................................................................... 33

12.0 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 34 Appendix 1: Wood Recyclers Association – Grades of Wood for Recovery ......................................... 35 Appendix 2: Scenarios investigated ..................................................................................................... 36 Appendix 3: Explanatory notes for Fig.3 .............................................................................................. 40


2.0 Introduction & Aims

This report sets out the results of an investigation into the collection and recovery/recycling of waste wood in

England & Wales, in order to suggest changes, improvements and opportunities which might be expected to have

a positive impact on the amount of wood waste recovered, or on the value of recovered materials such as

through recovery into higher value markets. The presumption throughout this report is that the aim of wood

recycling and recovery activities should be to increase recovery in line with the Waste Hierarchy, as far as this is

practicable in light of technical feasibility, economic viability, and taking account of factors such as market

demand for wood waste as a commodity.

Throughout the report the definition used for wood waste follows that set out in the European Union Waste

Framework Directive of 2008:

‘waste’ means any substance or object which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard; [Article 3.1 Directive 2008/98/EC].

The objectives of this report are to:

Identify opportunities for development of the wood waste supply infrastructure, in order to increase the

rate of recovery of waste wood for supply to emerging end uses.

To identify and develop the business case for Wood Waste Collection Hubs in four specific scenarios,

taking account of economic and technical factors, and market conditions, giving recommendations and

evidence on any opportunities for increasing the recovery of wood waste.

To summarise available evidence on quantities of wood waste within England & Wales, how it is

currently collected, to which markets and end uses it is processed, and comment on how that existing

system can be further optimised.

To set out key drivers and constraints influencing the recovery of wood waste, including regulatory,

economic and operational. Then summarise the main barriers to investment in additional capacity. This

includes export markets, competing end uses, and the impacts of possible restrictions on landfilling

wood wastes.

To recommend steps that may be taken in terms of market support, guidance and information which

could support the further development of wood recycling activity and increase overall levels of wood

recycled.

Wood waste considered in this report includes all those arising from commercial, industrial, and household

sources, including construction, joinery, manufacturing and at a domestic level.

The forestry sector and primary wood processing (such as sawmills processing roundwood into timber) are not

considered as materials produced by these sectors are not normally considered waste in accordance with current

regulatory opinion

Equally, no detailed consideration is given to wood waste which is used/ managed on the site of production, such

as arboricultural waste which is chipped onsite and deposited onto the land as mulch; or wood offcuts which are

used as a biomass fuel for heating in joinery businesses to give two examples. In both cases the wood does not

become available as a waste for collection and further recovery.

This report is primarily concerned with the wood waste supply chain beyond the point of waste production – i.e.

starting at the point where materials become waste and are available for collection and recovery. While actions

earlier in the supply chain to minimise waste wood on the part of the producer could be very important in

minimising carbon impacts and achieving the greatest resource efficiency, this lies outside the scope of this

report.

A particular objective has been to examine the options and viability for wood waste collection hubs for

collecting wood waste. For the purposes of this report, ‘Collection Hubs’ are defined as points at which wood

waste arising in smaller amounts, where arrangements for collection and recovery may not be viable, can be

aggregated to larger amounts and achieve economies of scale in handling and processing that makes more

effective recovery possible. The intention is that aggregating smaller amounts would enable the recovery of

wood which may currently be sent for disposal, particularly low value wood suitable for EfW feedstocks.

The report is intended to cover England & Wales, but in practice the markets cannot always be readily

disaggregated between activities in England & Wales and the devolved administrations in Scotland and Northern

Ireland.


3.0 Available Quantities of Wood Waste

3.1 Published sources on wood waste arisings

There have been a range of reports produced by various stakeholders and research projects since the question of

total waste wood arisings was first attempted. This report draws on four main reports, each of which is published

and widely available. Reports produced earlier than these often included much higher estimates of total wood

waste arisings. These earlier reports are considered to have been superseded by these latest analyses, which

have been widely accepted within the wood recycling and waste management sectors. The four reports are:

Wood Waste Market in the UK, August 2009, Pöyry Forest Industry Consulting Ltd & Oxford

Economics Ltd, published by WRAP

http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/Wood_waste_market_in_the_UK.8204bbf1.7547.pdf

Realising the value of recovered wood – Market Situation Report, July 2011, Pöyry Forest Industry

Consulting Ltd, published by WRAP

http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/Wood_MSR_Final_Aug_2011.f1080c96.11101.pdf

Annual Data on Wood Recycling – 2011 Market Stats, Wood Recyclers Association (WRA),

http://www.woodrecyclers.org/index.php#

2011 Briefing Report – The UK Waste Wood Market, August 2011, Tolvik Consulting,

http://www.tolvik.com/markets-and-data/uk-waste-wood-market.php

While these reports address slightly different aims and therefore include different information, there is a fairly

narrow range between them regarding the overall amount of waste wood produced in the United Kingdom.

Where differences do occur they either tend to lie within a reasonable range of uncertainty given the gaps in the

evidence, or where it is reasonable to conclude that changes in total arisings have occurred since the data on

which the report is based was produced.

Wood Waste Market in the UK, concluded that between 4.5 and 4.6 million tonnes of wood waste were

produced. This was achieved by applying two different methodologies – a bottom up approach based on sampling

waste production and extrapolating; and a top down approach based on total known wood consumption and

levels of industry activity with modelling of the proportion of waste arising from each. The data used for this

report related to 2007, and the report predicted a slowdown in the panel board; construction; and furniture

industries.

Realising the value of recovered wood (Market Situation Report) revisited the methodology used in the

2009 report using data from 2010, based on the reduction in economic activity in relevant industries, and

estimated that 4.1 million tonnes of wood waste had been produced in 2010.

Annual Data on Wood Recycling is a historic dataset compiled from WRA members’ returns for activity the

previous year, representing wood waste demand in the various end markets. Its importance lies in the very high

proportion of wood recovery activity as a whole which is undertaken by WRA members and is regarded as an

accurate picture of the industry, although the WRA would acknowledge that not all wood recovery is undertaken

by its members. Nonetheless, this remains a reliable dataset as recycling activities by non WRA members follows

the same pattern of types and markets.

2011 Briefing Report – The UK Waste Wood Market is a commercially produced estimate of total wood

waste arisings, including wastes which do not enter the recovery markets and may find ‘informal’ outlets for

recovery. It calculated the total figure for 2010 to be 4.3 million tonnes. This figure lies very close to that in the

2011 WRAP report, with the main difference being the amount of wood waste exported.

http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/Wood_waste_market_in_the_UK.8204bbf1.7547.pdf

http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/Wood_MSR_Final_Aug_2011.f1080c96.11101.pdf

http://www.woodrecyclers.org/index.php

http://www.tolvik.com/markets-and-data/uk-waste-wood-market.php


3.2 Changes in wood waste treatment and disposal routes over time

Data on the total amount of material processed through permitted Waste Management Facilities in England and

Wales has been obtained from Environment Agency sources for each of the last three calendar years. Figure 1

below shows changes in the total amount of wood waste which was dispatched from facilities holding an

Environmental Permit after collection, and probably some level of bulking, processing or sorting. The fate of each

consignment is recorded on the transfer note by the facility on dispatching the waste. The totals may not fully

capture all wood waste recovered because:

Some double counting may take place where waste passes through more than one permitted facility. In

practice, this is limited, as the value of waste wood means that it cannot be handled and processed by

several separate operations, without risking becoming uneconomic to end users (or loss making).

‘Virgin timber’ (i.e. untreated, uncontaminated wood not mixed with other wastes) does not fall within

the waste regulatory system. This includes substantial additional tonnages of material.

Facilities holding a waste management exemption are not included in these totals – exempt facilities are

not required to submit tonnage returns to the Environment Agency.

Whatever sources of inaccuracy may be present are consistent throughout the three years for which the

data is presented, and the graph can be said to present an accurate picture of change in patterns of

recovery over time – even if the overall wood waste recovery may be understated.

Figure 1: Changes in recovered wood markets 2008-10

Figure 1 indicates that:

A total of just over 3 million tonnes of wood waste was handled by permitted facilities in 2010, an increase of over 30% in 2 years. This indicates a significant continued increase in the recovery of wood waste even before considering non-regulated wood waste which does not appear in these figures.

The ‘recovery’ category is used by many facilities as a general term to include both energy recovery (i.e. biomass end markets) and recycling (panelboard and other higher value markets). Some respondents during this research have suggested this may be in part to protect commercial confidentiality by avoiding disclosing exact details of markets served by recovered wood (although some of the data from site returns can be accessed from the EA regulatory records).

The increase in the amount of wood waste where the fate is shown as ‘unknown’ is anecdotally suggested to be the result of export markets, where the facility despatching the waste may operate through a broker or intermediary and have less direct knowledge on the final destination. Additionally, it may signify an increase in ‘informal’ markets such as material use in homes or small scale biomass installations.

0

500,000

1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

3,000,000

3,500,000

Wood Waste Outputs2008



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oo

d w

aste

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m p

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itte

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Fates of wood waste from facilities 2008-10 Unknown

Treatment

Transfer

Landfill

Incinerator

Recovery


3.3 Geographical breakdown of wood waste arisings

In addition to the reports outlined in section 4.1 above, data on wood waste has been drawn from the

Environment Agency’s Waste Data Interrogator tool for 2009. This is a dataset, available on license from the

Environment Agency2 in England which covers all movements of waste to permitted facilities, and is compiled

from operator returns. The dataset is searchable, and can be broken down by geographical area and waste type.

The 20 local authority areas with the highest wood waste total appears below in Table 1 below

Local Authority Area

Wood Tonnage (tonnes)

1 Manchester 190000

2 Leeds 87000

3 Tameside 66000

4 Bassetlaw 60000

5 Redcar and Cleveland 59000

6 City of Plymouth 58000

7 Sandwell District 56000

8 Wiltshire 47000

9 Enfield 44000

10 Swale District 43000

11 Bexley 37000

12 Reigate and Banstead 33000

13 Huntingdonshire District 29000

14 Bedford 27000

15 Bridgend 26000

16 Babergh District 24000

17 City of Kingston upon Hull 22000

18 Havering 22000

19 Sheffield City 22000

20 Wellingborough District 22000

Table 1: Areas of largest wood waste arisings (Source: Environment Agency 2009)

The whole dataset, consisting of data relating to 316 local authorities were mapped to give a visual

representation of the distribution of wood waste processed through waste management facilities in England &

Wales. To simplify mapping, amounts are rounded to the nearest 1000 tonnes, and local authorities where less

than 1000 tonnes is found are shown as zero. The map of wood waste arisings is shown overleaf.

Areas where larger quantities of wood waste are being collected and/or processed, and which therefore represent

the most likely potential collection opportunities, appear to fall broadly into three main categories:

Major urban conurbations such as Manchester, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Birmingham, Bristol.

Locations closer to coastal locations and presumably linked to import/export markets, including the

North East of England, Suffolk, Essex, and the South Coast.

Relatively rural locations with significant forestry activity such as the South West of England, Shropshire,

Wiltshire.

Not surprisingly, higher arisings of wood waste tend to be found relatively close to the network of motorways and

major roads. Wood waste passing through a permitted facility may not have originated in the same local

authority area but it would be expected that transport distances would be minimised to keep costs low. There

are over 2,200 permitted waste facilities which handle wood waste, not including exempt facilities. However,

economies of scale would mean that larger facilities may be able to offer cheaper waste handling services, and

we would therefore expect some bias towards larger facilities, which would cluster wood waste arisings to fewer

locations. This is consistent with the pattern in the map below. The membership of the WRA has also been

mapped (yellow points shown on map), as the WRA membership account for the great majority of wood waste

recovered in the UK. WRA operations are distributed mainly in areas of high wood arisings, but also correlate

strongly with the motorway network and main transport routes (not shown on this map).

2 Further information is available at: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/library/data/123484.aspx

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/library/data/123484.aspx


Figure 2: Map of wood waste by Local Authority area


4.0 The Practicalities of a Wood Waste Collection Hub.

4.1 Grades of recovered wood

The wood waste grading system3 which is generally accepted throughout the wood recovery industry was

originally developed by the Wood Recyclers Association, and has since been affirmed by the publication of the

PAS111 - Publicly Available Specification for the requirements and test methods for processing

waste wood4 .

4.2 Sorting Processes

As much of the sorting process as possible is ‘designed in’ through the collection system by pricing incoming

wood waste consignments according to content to give waste producers and intermediaries such as skip hire

companies price incentives. This helps to keep ‘clean’ wood waste types separate. The wood waste is then

subject to a range of sorting and grading processes according to the operation.

The business model of wood recyclers tends to be based on efficient handling of large volumes of material with

lowest processing cost to enable them to supply a competitively priced product in bulk, and at relatively low profit

margins, to the end markets. Each wood recycling operation must make a judgement, based on the end markets

and feedstocks available to them, as to whether they choose high value end markets which may require more

investment and overheads in processing, or low value end markets where high volume, rapid throughput and low

handling cost become more important. Larger processors may choose some balance between the two.

Creation of successful wood waste collection hubs would seem to offer three main possible approaches:

1. To enter the collection and processing market alongside existing wood recyclers, and provide parallel

services which sort, process, grade and supply to marketable grades. This would require fairly extensive

investment in equipment, and a detailed knowledge of markets and their requirements, and requires

direct competition in a supply chain in which margins are known to be relatively low.

2. To provide only a collection and bulking function which then supplies to the wood recycling specialists

for actual processing and sale to end markets. This enables partnership and co-operation with the

existing supply chain by providing additional material into existing material handling capacity, and limits

the actual processing investment needed.

3. To supply unprocessed wood waste from the collection hub to end users. This is likely to result in mixed

grades of mostly lower grade wood waste being supplied to the WID compliant biomass market. Some

market knowledge would be required, and opportunities to recycle higher grades of wood waste might

be lost.

Of these three approaches, the collection and bulking function (2 above) should offer the lowest risk for a new

operation, in terms of access to markets, investment, and operational expertise required. For existing wood

recycling operations, any of the three approaches, running in parallel with an existing successful wood recycling

operation may be viable depending on local markets and supply factors. For the purposes of this report, it is

assumed that the ‘Collection Hub’ objective would be to secure new, currently unrecovered material to feed into

existing supply chains, particularly that material which would otherwise be destined for landfill.

4.3 Waste Codes for Wood Waste

Table 3 sets out the European Waste Catalogue codes for waste wood that have been considered, in calculating

available wood supplies in the waste management system which are available for recovery. Estimates use these

codes for data searches.

This does not include wood waste which is mixed with other types of waste which will generally be disposed of

to landfill or to incineration (especially where collected in municipal waste streams). Wood waste recovered from

mixed waste through the activities of Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) appears under chapter 19 codes below,

but this is a fairly small proportion of the total.

3 See Appendix 1

4 www.wrap.org.uk/pas111


European Waste

Catalogue Codes Description Origins

03-01-01, 03-03-01 Waste Bark & Wood Industries connecting with wood processing,

paper and similar 03-01-04 Sawdust shavings etc

containing dangerous

substances

03-01-05 Sawdust shavings etc not

containing dangerous

substances

15-01-03 Wooden Packaging Waste Packaging – this mostly consists of pallets

used in bulk transport of goods.

17-02-01 Wood Wood from construction & demolition activity

17-02-04 Wood – containing

dangerous substances



Wood from waste processing activities – e.g.

MRFs

19-12-07 Wood



Municipal Wastes and similar C&I wastes

20-01-38 Wood

Table 3: Wood Waste Codes included in this report


5.0 Current Management Methods and Collection Scenarios

The first stage of this project included a study to identify the different collection scenarios currently available for collection of wood waste, including household, commercial and industrial sources. These scenarios included the various stages in the supply chain, including initial collection from waste producers, sorting, bulking, and processing up to the point of reaching end users. Every effort was made to identify not only collection scenarios which are currently in use, but to include those which operate elsewhere (including other EU countries) and to identify collection scenarios which may not currently operate on any large scale, but which might provide useful recommendations.

The objectives of the desk study were:

To identify all possible collection routes.

To assess the current importance of each.

To understand the practical and economic constraints on the collection and recovery of wood waste.

To review particularly those options which provided a business model of a ‘Collection Hub’ which might enable the recovery of wood waste in situations where it is not currently recovered.

Produce a shortlist of the most promising scenarios for more detailed investigation. .

The list of collection scenarios was assessed for practicality, current success (including in other countries) and potential for success, in order to give an initial judgement of how effective each scenario was or could be in maximising the recovery of wood waste. This process reduced the initial list to those scenarios which are current or realistic potential scenarios, and which were considered viable and significant as ways of collecting waste wood. This gave a total of 14 collection scenarios, listed in Appendix 2.

Scenarios are divided into:

Primary collection scenarios, roughly corresponding to the initial stage in the supply chain where wood is collected at the point at which it enters the waste system. It is assumed in this report that ‘Collection Hubs’ are most likely to operate as primary collection scenarios.

Secondary Collections Scenarios, which generally represent subsequent bulking, processing or collection points taking place after Primary Collection (although some larger producers of wood waste

may send their wood waste directly to Secondary Collection Scenarios).


6.0 Scenarios selected for detailed analysis

From the 14 collection scenarios listed (Appendix 2), four clear recommendations emerge for further

investigation, with each representing a potential opportunity for significant recovery of wood wastes. The key

criteria against which these options were judged are:

Practical: Reasonable prospects of recovering significant quantities of wood waste where there is good

reason to believe that either wood is unrecovered, or is recovered into low value markets with reference to

the Waste Hierarchy.

Achievable: Options which can be readily integrated into current practice, which have good connections with

either producers of wood waste, or with operators and facilities that may currently already transport or

process it or can readily adapt to do so.

Affordable: Options where there is good reason to believe that the costs of entry to the market are not likely

to be a barrier – especially where operating as a wood waste collection hub represents a diversification from

a fairly closely related activity.

Option Explanation Prospects

Wood recovery

in composting

A good network of permitted sites already

exists and there is evidence that significant

quantities of wood waste are already

handled, albeit into lower value markets.

At least 137,000 tonnes already enters

composting processes, and potential capacity

could be much greater with limited additional

investment. A significant amount of oversize

reject fraction from composting processes is

wood material. Some composters already

process wood waste into products.

Local Authority

CA sites

Low value markets are achieved by many

LAs due to limited wood sorting.

Investigation of improved onsite sorting,

and access by small traders.

At least 600,000 tonnes already passes

through CA sites, and very large additional

capacity could be mobilised with limited

additional investment. Some local authorities

are already engaging in non-household

collections using CA sites

Collection

clusters for SME

wood

businesses

Wood collections from small businesses in

particular have historically not succeeded

due to high logistics costs relative to low

arisings level from each business. This

option proposes investigating the

economics of building collection routes at

sufficient density to ensure viability.

Currently, an estimated 200,000 tonnes are

processed through ‘informal’ recovery routes –

provision of a cost effective alternative might

be expected to recover significant new

material.

Reverse

logistics for

wood sector

businesses

Wood businesses receiving deliveries of

wood product manage wood wastes

through reverse logistics – backhauling

waste to the original distribution location

for onwards recovery

This enables substantial collection of clean

new wood waste at low marginal transport

cost by using existing transport movements to

return wood waste to a collection point for

processing to end markets. Consideration will

need to be given to regulatory requirements

for the bulking and storing of returned waste

wood.

Table 4: Recommendations for further detailed investigation

The flow diagram overleaf identifies the collection routes prioritised for further investigation, and shows how

these routes fit in to the wider map of material flows for wood waste. Sections 7 to 10 discuss these scenarios in

more detail.


6.1 Wood waste supply chain mapping The flow diagram in figure 3 indicates the important material flows between producers of wood waste and final end markets or disposal routes. Minor routes for management of wood waste are not shown in order to reduce

the complexity of the diagram. Further explanation to the colour scheme used appears overleaf. The four pathways shown in red in Figure 3 are the routes which are to be investigated in the remaining stages of the report. These are routes which are thought to be only used currently on a limited basis for recovery of wood, but which appear to provide additional opportunities for recovery of wood material.

Figure 3: Wood waste supply chains - material flows from producers to end markets. See notes in Appendix 3


Key to colour code used in diagram

Colour used in diagram Comments Activity by waste producers, including

choice of routes for wood wastes Arrows give a very rough indication of relative size of

material flows from producers into the various options.

Management/use of waste by producers, and informal disposal routes

This route is only generally applicable to small wood waste producers, and tends to supply waste only for local uses.

Options involving delivery of wastes to recovery routes by producers.

Mainly an option for householders through CAs, but scope exists to extend this for non-household wastes.

Wood waste collection options for producers from waste collectors

Household wood waste can generally only be collected in mixed waste – commercial producers may have a choice.

Flow of material and activities connected with waste collectors

Space constraints and the complexity of these activities mean that relative amounts are difficult to show clearly.

Material flows and activities connected with processors

These may be the same organisations as collectors and is the initial (sometimes only) processing stage.

End markets for wood waste – some are waste management companies

The end markets roughly follow the waste hierarchy from left to right.

Potential routes which the initial desk research suggested may be promising

These potential options and alternative scenarios are discussed in the next section.


7.0 Reviewed Scenario 1: Wood Recovery in Composting

7.1 Compost producers processing wood waste.

Composting operations have traditionally utilised wood waste for both the composting process itself and also to

produce high quality mulches, landscaping products and other recycled wood products. The industry has

undergone significant change as a result of the Environmental Permitting Review. Prior to the EPR, composters

could operate under a Paragraph 12 exemption which allowed them to hold up to 1,000 m3 of material onsite

including feedstock, material undergoing processing, and finished compost. For composters holding

Environmental Permits, there is an ongoing obligation to provide quarterly returns to the Environment Agency of

all waste consignments received and dispatched from the site, which must specify the relevant waste code.

Using this data it is possible to estimate the amount of wood waste received by composters for processing, and

the amount leaving the site as wood waste.

With no underlying requirement to produce compost to a standard, quality varies from low grade ‘shred and

spread’ operations to the production of high quality horticultural products. Economic and market factors have

delivered a trend of improving quality and compliance, and the specification for compost products (PAS1005) has

been widely adopted. One requirement of PAS100 compost producers is that they will not accept treated wood of

any kind.

Wood can be received as:

Green waste – consisting of branches, tree surgery waste and other virgin round wood which is

untreated and high in moisture content.

Segregated Wood waste fractions – potentially including a variety of grades, however the

Environment Agency do not generally consider any treated timber to be acceptable for use in composting as per their Position Statement on the Environmental Regulation of Wood6.

7.1.1 Tonnage of wood inputs to composting processes

The total figure recorded as being received by these sites is 137,730 tonnes (see Table 6).

Other wood

wastes

Sawdust and

shavings

Wood packaging

Total tonnage received

Total tonnes received 132,635 3,798 1,297 137,730

% of total 96.30% 2.76% 0.94% 100.00%

Number of facilities receiving 37 15 8

Average tonnes per facility 3585 253 162

Number of unique facilities 46

Table 6: Wood Waste received by composters

5 http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/bsi-pas-100-producing-quality-compost

6 http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Research/PS_005_Regulation_of_wood_v3.0.pdf - The Environmental Regulation of Wood, Environment Agency, version 2.0, accessed 31 July 2012.

http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/bsi-pas-100-producing-quality-compost

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Research/PS_005_Regulation_of_wood_v3.0.pdf


Figure 4: Source of wood waste received by composters

While the exact nature of the wood represented in these waste movements cannot be confirmed with complete

certainty, the following conclusions are very likely to hold true:

Wood waste from ‘Wood processing’ would probably include pulped or chipped wood, overbark etc, and

may not include treated wood at all. Wood ‘waste packaging’ mostly consists of pallets, which will

generally be untreated wood (although some are painted or treated). Construction and demolition

wastes are very likely to included treated wood fractions – particularly the demolition elements. The

tonnage involved is potentially significant at 10,034 tonnes received by 19 facilities. Typical C&D wood

waste would not be suitable for composting without sorting to remove the treated wood fraction.

Waste management facilities could vary from transfer stations receiving consignments of clean wood

and sending it onwards for composting, to sorting, MRF, and MBT facilities. The likelihood is that this

material has itself been sorted from other wastes, and may include waste previously described as C&D

wastes or MSW. Tonnages are much greater at 24,153 tonnes, but only represent 10 facilities receiving

waste. If this wood waste has been sorted from other wastes it would not meet the PAS100

requirement that only source segregated materials enter the composting process.

Wood received from municipal sources totals 98,310 tonnes – this is mostly from household sources and

will include a high proportion of mixed wood wastes. Most of this will not be suitable for composting.

7.1.2 Fates of wood wastes received by composters

Wood waste leaving a composting site (other than that appearing as a waste transfer process) could be subject

to a number of fates:

It is absorbed into the composting process, becoming part of the final screened compost product

It is used to produce landscaping mulches and sold on as a bagged or bulk product. This is common practice for composters and provides a substantial supply of mulches and landscaping products available in retail and bulk quantities.

It is disposed of onsite – such as composting sites co-located with landfill/disposal operations, or brownfield sites undergoing remediation.

3.94 1.30

10.04

24.15

98.31

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

03 - WoodProcessing,

Manufacturing &Paper Industries

15 - WastePackaging

17 - Construction& Demolition

Wastes

19 - WasteManagement

Facilities

20 - MunicipalWastes

Ton

nag

e o

f w

oo

d w

aste

re

ceiv

ed

by

com

po

ste

rs

('0

00

to

nn

es)

Quantity of wood waste sent to composters by Industry/Sector ('000 tonnes)


It is sold for biomass use7, or possibly where a biomass facility is co-located, used onsite for biomass generation.

It should be noted that a separate wood fraction can be a desirable feedstock for composters since it can also

enable the management of high moisture content organic sludges or organic liquids, where the physical structure

of the wood facilitates absorption and supports the composting process. These high moisture feedstocks often

carry a significant gate fee, justifying significant effort to source suitable wood waste even where the gate fee for

the wood material may be low – but this does not create large demand overall.

7.1.3 Issues involved in wood recycling by composters

A number of costs and operational issues were identified from discussions with composters who handle wood as

part of their operations. The general view was that there is very a competitive market for access to wood

feedstocks, with many companies involved, and any large investment in handling wood was risky. Some

composters had initially started as transfer operations including wood waste before diversifying into composting,

and some had taken the reverse path and diversified into wood waste from composting operations.

The general approach for both had been to use existing assets, including their plant, sites and customer base to

diversify their activities with limited additional capital investment. Some then went on to make further

investment in wood processing capacity, but most considered the market to be quite ‘crowded’ currently. Local

supply and demand factors were important in successful wood recovery operations – e.g. nearby biomass

facilities.

Key points emerging from conversations with composters included:

Most of the necessary plant and equipment for basic bulk handling/loading of wood was likely to already

be in place.

Many processes operating under an Environmental Permit for composting are sufficiently permitted to

allow them to carry out additional activities with wood, so additional planning/permitting costs can be

fairly low.

Low margins between wood waste received, and material prices or gate fees from end users or wood

specialists were cited as a problem. A viable operation depended on either high volumes and rapid

throughput, or local gaps in the market where the cost of disposal of wood for the producer was higher.

Where collections of material from wood waste producers are undertaken, typical collection receptacles

were 35 cubic yard ‘roll-on-roll-off’ containers.

Most sorting of grades, where it was undertaken at all by composters, was undertaken manually as a

‘yard sort’ using existing labour and equipment such as tractors with loading shovel.

Trommels, shredders and other existing equipment could be used for size grading of material, but

composters would need to invest in equipment such as overband magnets to remove metal

contaminants.

Some composters will not accept wood inputs containing material which is known to be treated,

especially where they process the waste into products such as mulches which are then sold directly to

end markets.

Gate fees would need to rise, especially for treated wood, to reflect rising transport costs in areas where

demand is low. Currently, small wood waste producers might landfill wood waste in some areas

because local demand isn’t enough to cover the increased separate collection costs.

Composters were generally involved in some level of processing of material such as sorting by grades to

add value and increase margins. Some saw potential in collection hubs in more rural areas, such as

composters, using existing space and capacity, to provide a transfer only service where material could

be brought by waste producers for bulking up and subsequent collection by wood recycling specialists.

7.1.4 Conclusions

Composters already play a significant role in handling wood waste, with a minimum of 137,000 tonnes of wood waste throughout the UK being handled by composting facilities. Most of these already seek other

7 One industry player is known to market compost oversize products as a component of their biomass fuels. It is likely to carry a fairly low value without further processing, as the moisture content after emerging from a composting process will be higher than optimal for a biomass operation.


markets for wood waste outside of composting, through recycling or biomass markets, and relatively small amounts of wood waste which is suitable for other end uses is actually composted.

Existing plant and equipment which is typically already used by medium sized composters is likely to be sufficient for basic wood handling and processing operations – to provide a collection hub where wood waste can be cost effectively collected. This could be particularly advantageous where composters in rural locations can provide a wood collection point which might not otherwise be available, and enable diversion of material which is currently landfilled. Access to wood feedstocks at sufficient economic margins (i.e. difference between incoming gate fees and material sale) is the main barrier to investment in increased capacity.

From a wood waste point of view, most composters engaged in wood recovery tend to supply lower value end markets8, such as biomass or landscaping products and mulches. Some smaller composters may currently compost wood waste which may not comply with quality standards for composting, this is likely to be limited, and recent permitting changes make this increasingly less likely over time. These changes may release some material for other end uses which is currently being composted.

Planning and permitting changes may be needed to enable composters to commence wood recovery activity, but the cost and complexity for otherwise suitable sites is likely to be relatively low.

There may be localised opportunities for some composters to engage successfully in recovering wood waste to fill gaps in local supply chains – and indeed some already do so. However, this does not constitute a substantial new opportunity for recovery of wood waste that can be generally applied in the UK.

8 As opposed to high value products such as equine surfaces or animal bedding.


8.0 Reviewed Scenario 2: Civic Amenity Recycling Centres (CA sites)

8.1 The existing network of CAs

The most recently published detailed survey of Civic Amenity Recycling Centres in the UK (Network Recycling,

2004) suggested a total of 1065 sites then existed (this is due to be updated by WRAP in September 2012).

Recent changes in public spending are likely to have impacted on that number, but we can say that there remains

an extensive network of sites which probably numbers around 1000 sites, with most householders living within

accessible travelling range of one.

Waste accepted should be exclusively household waste at most sites unless suitably authorised to receive other

wastes–a few early trials of collecting C&I wastes with payment made by weight are not yet extensive enough to

impact on the overall data for waste collected.

8.2 Findings:

Wood waste from CAs totalled 582,324 tonnes and included returns from 602 individual facilities with the main

reasons for non-inclusion in the CA category being that missing sites are classed as transfer stations, or are co-

located with another primary activity such as landfill site or waste treatment facility. This is common especially

amongst private sector CA site operators who hold local authority contracts for managing the services, as permit

conditions tend to be more flexible.

Table 7 below, sets out the breakdown of wood wastes received by CAs in 2009.

Waste Wood Type Total %age

Other wood wastes 581,281 99.8%

Sawdust and shavings 1,044 0.2%

Grand Total 582,324 100.0%

Table 7: Breakdown of wood waste types from CAs

Virtually all waste was coded as “other wood wastes”. The very small proportion coded as ‘sawdust and other

shavings’, applied to a small number of sites and may either reflect differences in coding practice, or specific

circumstances which apply at a small number of sites (such as some form of processing)

This broadly tallies with the estimates appearing in Tolvik 2011, but tells us little about the practices used onsite

to sort or process wood. The reporting limitations of the Permitting system provides only one major category for

Local Authorities and their contractors to report wood movement from CA sites (European Waste Catalogue code

20 01 38 – or 20 01 37 for wood containing dangerous substances – i.e. preservative treated wood). This means

that we cannot tell directly whether any sorting into grades has taken place. But the breakdown by fates of that

waste shows that most was recovered:

Fate of Waste Incinerator Landfill Recycling Re-

processing

Transfer

Station Treatment Unknown

Proportion of total waste 1.2% 2.2% 0.3% 83.9% 7.9% 2.0% 2.5%

Number of sites 12 36 4 529 58 24 34

Table 8: Fates of wood wastes collected through CAs.


Recycling, reprocessing, and treatment can be considered to be broadly synonymous in the case of wood and this

together indicates 86.2% of wood sent to recovery channels. Of the 7.9% sent to transfer stations, most will be

re-directed into processing for end markets9, giving a total recovery rate of well over 90% for segregated wood

streams. Further checks amongst local authorities found that:

Most sites do not sort wood by grades and they are sent for further processing as mixed wood wastes.

A number of Councils, including Leeds City Council and Hull City Council are beginning to request users of CA sites to separate into ‘untreated wood’ and ‘other wood’, but this is not common.

Sampling and composition work undertaken on other projects in the sector which were commissioned by

CO2Sense suggest a typical composition as set out in Table 9 below (grades are based on the standard WRA wood grades as set out in PAS111).

Grade A Grade B Grade C Grade D

14.8% 25.7% 57.1% 2.4%

Table 9: Marketable grades of waste wood

Based on these proportions only around 40% of wood waste from CA sites could be ‘recycled’ to the strict definition, and any claimed recycling rate above this would stem from low grade (ie non PAS100 compliant) composting. It is possible that some material is claimed as recycled, when in fact it has been used for WID compliant energy recovery.

Most CA wood waste passes through the hands of specialist wood recyclers after transfer from the local authority or their contractor – although some larger waste management companies contracted to Councils may seek to recover more of the value in the material themselves, by further processing or use in biomass operations.

8.2.1 Environmental Permitting and planning requirements

The system of Environmental Permitting has been overhauled and simplified by the Environment Agency in recent

years, with an increasing range of Standard Permits being produced for operating waste management facilities.

Standard Rules permits are flexible enough to meet the needs of most CAs, although where acceptance of

9 Over 60% of those using ‘Transfer’ as a category allocated all their waste to that, and none to other fates – suggesting that ‘Transfer’ itself is largely a question of terminology rather of practice. A wood waste re-processor will probably be permitted as a transfer station, making the two categories to some degree synonymous.

Incinerator Landfill

Recycling

Re- processing

Transfer Station

Treatment Unknown

Fate of Wood Waste Collected at CAs

Figure 5: Fates of wood waste from HWRCs


hazardous wastes is required, a Bespoke permit would normally be necessary. CAs may be permitted as transfer

stations10, but some may operate under more restrictive conditions11.

The principal difference between transfer station and CA permit conditions is that wastes codes for CA sites are

limited mainly to municipal waste codes and some construction and demolition waste, whereas transfer station

permits are likely to include a wider range. The last dataset published by the Environment Agency (covering the

period up to the end of March 2010) indicated that 782 sites were categorised as Household Waste Amenity sites

– making it likely that the range of wastes which would be included in non-household sources could not be

accepted on these sites. Changes in the permit category to a transfer station may be needed to support these

sites in providing additional services for ‘non-household’ waste collection. The permit charges, risk levels and

regulatory approach by the Environment Agency are broadly similar for either category however, and other than

the administrative process and expense involved in moving from one category to another, the cost is not likely to

be substantial if the sites themselves are suitable in principle. Other restrictions may arise from local planning

restrictions, or other local authority policy restrictions.

Common issues which may require addressing to ensure good practice and full legal compliance might include:

Few CAs have weighbridges and administrative processes in place to ensure that Duty of Care

requirements are met with regard to transfer notes.

There may be space constraints on some sites that make substantial use of sites by commercial

vehicles.

Existing planning restrictions may limit the use of sites by non-household waste producers, and

potential increased traffic volumes may themselves present barriers to changing planning conditions.

Current permits will need to be checked to ensure that they include the necessary range of non-

household wastes as defined by their European Waste Catalogue codes.

Commercial contracts between local authorities and existing site contractors may need to be reviewed

and revised terms agreed if the scope of site users is to be widened.

Taken together these potential barriers may rule out some current CA sites as possible sites for SME waste drop

off points, especially where physical layout or capacity do not lend themselves to increased throughput.

In practice, only a minority of CA sites would need to provide services for non-household waste producers for a

significant network of sites to be available and a substantial quantity of material to be recovered – including other

recyclable materials as well as wood wastes. To provide a service which is accessible to SMEs as a drop off point,

Local Authorities and their contractors would need to review their sites and select those most suitable for

extension to include non-household wastes. Likely indicators of suitable sites are:

Sites which are already located well away from residential areas where access is good, and where

planning restrictions do not prevent effective use by an increased volume of small business users.

Sites which already have suitable layout, space and traffic management methods to accommodate van

and pickup type vehicles likely to be used by the potential customer base, and where necessary, a

weighbridge. A suitable limit could be the 3.5 tonne GVW limit which can be driven under a standard

private car driving licence.

Sites which include any necessary physical facilities, such as offices, other buildings, storage facilities

etc.

Where currently available skills and current procedures can ensure that the administrative requirements,

such as weighbridge operation, transfer note requirements and other Duty of Care issues can be

correctly discharged.

The additional service would be provided on a cost neutral basis or better, and adding non-household waste to

these sites will generate additional income streams largely by using existing assets with no further major

investment. From the point of view of the SME business producing waste, the incentive is the reduced cost and

increased convenience of using drop off sites. This service is likely to be particularly attractive to small traders in

the construction and related trades, where disposal costs for small quantities of waste can be high.

10 The Standard Rules Permit issued by the Environment Agency is available at: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/topics/permitting/35252.aspx

11 See Standard Rules SR2008 No13 – Household Waste Amenity Site - http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Business/SR2008No13_75ktev3.0.pdf

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/topics/permitting/35252.aspx

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/topics/permitting/35252.aspx

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Business/SR2008No13_75ktev3.0.pdf

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Business/SR2008No13_75ktev3.0.pdf


8.3 CAs which are currently available for use for trade waste

An initial search has been undertaken of CA services which are currently available to trade waste, and further

enquiries have established pricing and approach. This is presented in Table 10 below which gives a snapshot of

current services (all prices exclude VAT):

Name of

Council

Wood material grades

or categories

Price structure Comments

Buckingham-

shire County

No specified wood category

– generally classed as

general waste.

Charged in quantity bands.

Green waste £80-£90/t and

general trade waste £110-

£120/t

Comparable prices to skip hire alternatives –

although it may work out to be cheaper for

SMEs producing smaller regular quantities up

to around ½ tonne.

Fife Council Classed as construction

material – but hazardous

grades excluded.

Annual Permit required (at

time of publication) at

around £400 to enable a

specified light good vehicle

to deposit recyclable waste

Likely to be very cost effective for small

regular loads from small builders and similar

where a whole skip would not be required.

Landfill wastes are charged at £82 per tonne.

Milton Keynes No specified wood category

– mostly charged as general

waste

Charged in bands Green

waste £60-£70/t and general

trade waste £90-£100/t

Separate C&I waste area with weighbridge.

Oxfordshire

Waste

Partnership

Not published – market rates

and conditions apply

Operated as a parallel but

separate C&I transfer station

for non HHW from one of

the CA sites.

Not contracted to Oxfordshire County, but

contractor also holds CA contracts, and the

non HHW service is promoted by OCC

alongside services to householders.

Somerset

Waste

Partnership

Low Grade Wood

High Grade Wood

£40/t (high grade) - £65/t

(low grade) – priced for

‘builders bags’ at some sites

Is likely to be much cheaper than other forms

of disposal such as skips for producers of small

quantities of wood at many sites, but more

expensive than single site skip collections of

wood.

Suffolk

County

Does not specifically target

wood as a material

Ranging from £6 for a

carload to £55 for a larger

van load

Operated independently of Council on a cost

neutral basis Sites were taken over by a range

of organisations due to Council budget

restrictions

Table 10: Current CAs which accept non household wastes

Given that these CA sites would already have existing material skips, supply chains with wood recyclers for the

existing household waste streams, the additional costs added for incorporating non household wastes may be

recoverable from site users through charges, for example.

There is little focus on wood evident in most of these services – with the most common categories being

compostable green wastes, inert C&D wastes, and in some cases materials such as metals, paper, and glass.

Other materials, where they can be deposited by businesses are charged at the full landfill rate. For each of the

authorities shown above the service is available at only a small number of the total CA sites – evidently not all

sites are suitable.

8.4 Conclusions Case studies have been produced and published12 by WRAP to showcase the experiences of the existing CA sites

that are successfully providing recycling services to businesses. This will help other local authorities assess the

suitability of their own sites and identify where similar opportunities may exist. Prices for deposited wastes

should reflect more closely the full range of wastes which businesses are able to recycle and the costs involved in

managing them by the CA, to maximise the incentive for businesses to recover rather than dispose of their

wastes.

12 http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/business-waste-recycling-projects-trade-bring-sites


9.0 Reviewed Scenario 3: Collection Clusters for SME Wood Businesses

9.1 Description of the sector

For the purposes of this report, this sector is defined to include both joinery manufacturers and related trades

(often related to the manufacture of construction components and products), which is estimated to include

around 2,900 companies, and the furniture and related trades with an estimated 8,400 companies13. This gives

an estimated total of roughly 11,400 businesses in the wood sector for the UK as a whole. This cannot be readily

disaggregated into the separate home nations and has been mapped for the UK as whole to visualise the

distribution of these businesses geographically.

Although the products and markets are very different for these two sectors, these businesses can be considered

together in that they consume wood and wood products and produce wood wastes. From a waste management

point of view, they represent a potentially substantial source of wood waste for recycling or recovery. Wood

waste produced will tend to be ‘new’ wood, including production residues, offcuts, sawdust and shavings, rather

than post-consumer waste wood, which is likely to include more contaminants and be in poorer condition.

Wood waste will include both virgin wood and treated wood products such as panelboard, plywood, and resin

bonded wood products. This treated wood waste will not be suitable for many of the possible recycling markets

and would almost certainly only be suitable for combustion in a WID compliant biomass facility. Businesses which

work mainly with virgin untreated wood are likely to have higher levels of waste due to the need to plane to size

and remove knots and other natural imperfections.

These two related sectors are broken down by size in the graphs below. Furniture and related trades are mostly

micro-businesses, while joinery and related trades are slightly larger on average, but still mostly below £500k

turnover.

Figure 6: Wood sector companies - size breakdown in sector

13 Joinery: A Resource Efficiency Action Plan, British Woodworking Federation, Sept 2010

6855 7188 1190 1112 315 60

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

Pe

rce

nta

ge o

f fu

rnit

ure

co

mp

anie

s

Turnover or workforce size

Breakdown of Furniture & Joinery sector by size

1624

725

174 116

174 87

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

Pe

rce

nta

ge o

f B

WF

me

mb

ers

hip

in e

ach

siz

e b

and

Annual turnover

British Woodworking Federation - Size of member companies

Breakdown by workforce size

Breakdown by company turnover

Graph shows breakdown of sector by workforce size and

value of turnover. Figures on each bar indicate number

of companies in each category. Source BFM (2009/10 data)


9.2 Waste management options for SME wood businesses

SMEs in the wood sector will have a number of choices for the management of their wood wastes:

Informal disposal – where wood waste is given away or even sold as a private arrangement between the

business and probably a local end user.

Re-sale as a product – for virgin wood with no treatments or contaminants, there would be no

regulatory requirements to limit disposal in this way, and it is common for wood waste to be sold as

home biomass fuel (or as kindling for solid fuel heating appliances)

Onsite disposal – e.g. use in a biomass installation within the business by the proprietors/employees of

the business.

Large scale skip collections – where formal collections of wood waste are contracted with a waste

management company or wood recycler – this tends to apply to larger producers of wood waste.

Regular bin collections – where a commercial waste bin is provided and emptied by a service provider.

Landfill disposal within mixed wastes – this is still common for mostly small producers, as it can

represent the lowest overall cost for managing wastes. A small number of larger producers of lower

grade wood, such as MDF, plywood and other woods not suitable for high value end markets do still use

landfill disposal, but this is not widespread, and appears to be declining.

This section of the report focuses specifically on the fifth option above - bin collections for wood waste, where

collection is undertaken weekly, fortnightly or monthly as part of a collection round. This includes

commercial/industrial wood waste, as there are no household collections of segregated wood waste operating

currently. It is assumed that the smallest size of bin which could be practical for wood would be the standard

1100 litre commercial bin. This would give roughly 100-200 kg of wood at a typical density for wood offcuts.

Regular bin collections will only apply to the smaller wood waste producers, as the clear evidence from the sector

is that larger producers will use on-demand skip collections, due to lower costs. Bin collections, by contrast, seek

to achieve economies by clustering many producers into a collection round, where many collections of small

amounts are possible at a reasonable cost for both collector and producer of waste. This requires a reasonable

level of geographical concentration, and recovered wood which is clean enough to have reasonable market

demand.

9.3 Geographic Locations of wood businesses

Using a variety of published data sources, including membership lists of trade bodies such as the Timber Trades

Federation, and published business directory data, a database of postcodes of businesses in the wood sector was

produced for mapping purposes. The total numbers of businesses for which a postcode was obtained was

3,698, equating to approximately one third of the total. This is a large enough proportion of the overall

population to have confidence that the geographical distribution is representative of the whole sector.

We would expect that the smallest businesses, particularly self-employed sole traders, would be the least well

represented in this sample, as they are less likely to appear in trade directories, join trade associations, etc. As a

result, while this sample may not be representative of wood businesses in the strictest sense, it is likely to include

the businesses in the wood sectors which are relatively larger in turnover. These will therefore also be the

businesses which are most likely to produce larger amounts of wood waste. The whole sample has been mapped

to give a visual indication of the geographic distribution and enable clusters to be identified.


Figure 7: Distribution of wood sector businesses and wood recyclers

The map indicates a number of patterns for the distribution of businesses in the wood sector:

Outside key clusters, there is a good spread of wood sector businesses across all areas of England and

Wales, with very low densities only in the most rural areas. In principle, this should mean that wood

waste is available for collection in most parts of the UK.

Key clusters are located around traditional industrial centres in Birmingham and the West Midlands;

Manchester and the M62 corridor to Leeds; and Nottingham and the M1 motorway

On visual assessment there seems to be a reasonable geographic correlation with traditional forestry

centres such as Shropshire, the Welsh Marches and South West of England.

On a visual assessment, there does not appear to be an especially strong correlation between areas where wood waste arisings are high, and the density of wood sector businesses. This suggests that the waste management facilities at which wood arisings are recorded may not be located close to wood businesses – although the spread of wood recyclers (yellow triangles in Figure 7) shows a good distribution of existing recycling facilities and collectors in most areas of the country.


9.4 Process for assessment of quantities

No direct sources identify the amount of wood waste produced by these small wood manufacturing businesses,

and indeed there is very limited evidence that bin collections are generally available for wood alone. Businesses

outside this sector are not considered here, as production of wood waste in such businesses will be occasional

and limited. Construction and demolition activity will generally result in skip collections.

The total numbers of companies in the relevant sectors are roughly 11,00014, and the estimated amount of wood

consumption for these businesses lies in the range 250,000 and 400,000 cubic metres15. The typical wood

wastage rate is cited at 50% in the same source. This gives an average amount of waste per business of

between 11-36 m3 per annum.

The total amount of small businesses – i.e. those with less than £500,000 turnover – is 8,360. This suggests a

total range of wood waste of between roughly 100,000 and 300,000 tonnes for small businesses which would be

potentially suitable for wood waste bin collections. As only smaller businesses would be potentially suitable for

this collection option, it would be expected that the higher end of this scale would be excessive, and suggest a

maximum total available figure of 200,000 tonnes.

This in itself constitutes a substantial potential feedstock both for higher value markets such as panelboard, and

energy recovery for lower grades of wood, but the costs of collection, and established habits of waste

management present barriers.

9.5 Attitudes in the SME wood sector

A survey to the Timber Trade Federation (TTF) and the British Woodworking Federation (BWF) membership that

explored the area of waste management received a poor response despite potential respondents receiving regular

reminders. Of those who did contribute, it was identified that 80% of companies do not record or measure their

waste and 70% indicated that measurement of waste arisings was not included in their company waste

management plan.

The lack of apparent interest in waste related issues was also demonstrated by the minimal early take-up of a

previously developed on-line waste management tool. A series of free workshops were promoted between

November 2010 and January 2011 to explain the tool, but unfortunately struggled to attract interest. Members

within the Timber Resource Efficiency Partnership (TREP) suggested that if such a tool could attract a critical 100

users then it would be in a position to contribute to improved resource use and to waste reduction.

The 2010 Joinery Resource Efficiency Plan estimated that in 2009, waste levels within the joinery manufacturing

sector were typically in the order of 50%, resulting in disposal costs of around £125 per tonne. Much of this

inefficient use of resource is attributed to the lack of the availability of standard sizes, and much will depend on

where the material is purchased from and what sizes the merchants have in stock.

In addition there is a lack of a coherent waste strategy amongst many timber merchant chains with individual

branches operating independently, and there is evidence that some individual branches regularly place good

quality wood off-cuts with mixed waste. TREP have identified that Howarth Timber who operates multiple

branches is now operating a coherent plan throughout its network.

However, the lack of written centralised strategies and approaches to managing wood waste, and apparent lack

of focus, does not exclude the possibility that some recovery of wood takes place informally in many wood

businesses, and is not captured by formal reporting systems. Three main points emerged from discussions with

stakeholders in the SME wood sector:

Many wood businesses already recycle much of their wood waste because it makes economic sense for

them to do so, given the value (or avoided disposal) cost of recycling.

Those that do not currently recycle would generally require an economic incentive to recycle, such as

cost savings on waste disposal.

In the absence of economic incentives, a regulatory requirement which prevents these businesses

disposing of wood waste to landfill would be required to achieve behavioural change.

14 This figure is derived by totalling estimates from the British Woodworking Federation, and the British furniture Manufacturers Association. The result is rounded down to the nearest 1,000, as the total may include a small number of businesses who are members of both trade associations. 15 Taken from Joinery: A Resource Efficiency Action Plan, Sept 2010, WRAP et al http://www.bwf.org.uk/fileadmin/documents/bwf/wood_waste/reap_joinery_final.pdf


9.6 Collection Clusters

The principle of a wood waste collection cluster is that there are many small businesses that regularly produce

small quantities of good quality wood waste (i.e. new and relatively uncontaminated wood, in distinction to wood

wastes such as from construction and demolition, which may be in poor condition and have many contaminants).

In urban and industrial locations where there will be concentrations of such businesses there may be scope to

gather this material as part of a bin collection scheme. Many premises will be restricted in size with little scope for

storage or skip location.

There is little evidence for the take up of such collection schemes for wood in the UK, and examples which were

found were either limited in scope or no longer functioning, and the general view was that the approach had not

been successful. The main barrier had been the need to cover the costs of service provision. With only limited

uptake and relatively small quantities of wood waste collected, the service cost became more expensive than

other disposal options, making bin collections unattractive to waste producers.

Comparisons with experience in other EU jurisdictions showed quite similar patterns of collection, with most wood

collections undertaken in skips, or drop off points, or through recovery of wood from mixed wastes in MBT or

MRF operations. Views were sought from companies currently undertaking waste collections as to what they

perceived as the key issues in small scale wood waste collections in bins, rather than skips. Typical views are

presented in Table 11 below for a larger nationwide collector, currently engaged in food and other waste

collections, and a smaller local independent operator currently undertaking SME business collections of general,

food and recyclable wastes.

Type of company

Customers

needed for wood

collection route

Costs of

service Comments

Larger waste collector,

currently engaged in food

waste and other industrial

waste collections.

25-30 per day –

totalling 150 in a

50 miles radius

£20 per

bin lift

Very difficult recruiting this number rapidly

enough to justify deployment of resources. Total

income which would need to be recovered from

the service would be about £80k per annum.

Smaller independent

waste collector – currently

undertaking food,

recyclables and general

waste collections

20 per day – each

daily route up to

40 miles

£10 per

bin lift

Would not invest in this approach currently due to

difficulty in recruiting enough customers. Costs of

vehicle and labour would be above £40k per

annum, and this can most readily be recovered by

undertaking recyclable collections, where demand

is higher than for wood.

Table 11: Operational parameters for small scale wood waste collection

The key barrier common to both was the view that not enough businesses may sign up to receive wood waste

collections to make the service economic, and retention in the longer term might mean that turnover of

customers is higher than for other waste collection types. The main cause of this was that for fairly small

quantities of waste, the cost of collection and landfill disposal of mixed waste may be no more expensive than

separate collections for recycling. For small waste producers particularly, the combined cost of a general waste

and separate wood waste collection would be more than a general waste collection including some wood waste.

With a common perception amongst waste producers that wood waste can either be managed at no cost where it

is good quality, or disposed of in the general waste bin where it is not, these indicative costs for separate

collections do not appear attractive to many wood businesses. One wood sector company with a particular

interest in developing small scale collection schemes is described briefly overleaf.


9.7 Case Study - Wood Yew Waste Wood Yew Waste is a large wood recycler dealing with over 1,000 tonnes of wood waste per week. They operate

in a number of sites in SW England which due to its rural nature means that haulage distances can be greater

than those associated with a more urban environment. They are currently in the process of setting up satellite

bulking stations where wood is broken (rather than shredded) to increase load density. Through this, vehicle

capacity is increased from approximately 10 tonnes per load to 18 – 19 tonnes per load, for further reprocessing

in Exeter.

They are interested in the concept of operating a collection scheme for wood waste as there are about 40 – 50

trading estates in their area. They envisage the collection would be operated by a small contractor, and consider

that such a scheme could become profitable within a year. So far however, little interest has been shown by

potential operators, reflecting the limited confidence to date by potential collectors in the willingness of wood

businesses.

9.8 Conclusions

There is a substantial amount of wood waste produced by small wood manufacturing businesses, but

considerable uncertainty over the amount. This report estimates that around 200,000 tonnes of wood waste is potentially available for collection by this route before taking account of other alternatives.

Consistent views expressed within the wood manufacturing & joinery SME sector suggest common use of informal disposal routes, where wood wastes are disposed of as products to external customers either

for payment or given away free to avoid disposal costs.

A key barrier to source segregated collection of wood waste from small businesses is the high transport and logistics costs per business.

For wood recycling specialists, there is almost no use of refuse collection vehicle (RCV) type vehicles capable of loading refuse bins into a compaction bodied vehicle. The general method of wood waste

collection is through skip exchange or the use of roll-on-roll-off (RORO) containers. The most likely companies to consider bin collection would be waste collection companies already using RCV type

vehicles, as compaction would greatly increase the payload to economic levels. Wood waste collected

would then enter the existing supply chains.

Practices such as the source segregation of waste by merchants will increase the availability of good

quality wood waste for collection, as issues with waste prior to and during processing become addressed. However overall waste arisings from timber manufacturing are expected to decline as a

result of increasing focus on waste minimisation and resource efficiency within the sector.

In current conditions the risks of developing small scale collections of wood relate mainly to the difficulties of recruiting customers to collection rounds. As this is unlikely to change without new regulatory requirements, new collection schemes are likely to require external financial input to allow initial operation except where local market conditions enable high route density and transport efficiency to reduce collection costs and make the operation viable. These situations are likely to be the exception rather than the rule.

Continued engagement with sector bodies such as the Timber Resource Efficiency Partnership (TREP), and trade bodies such as the British Woodworking Federation (BWF), the Timber Trades Federation (TTF) and the Wood Recyclers’ Association (WRA) to develop industry wide approaches in anticipation of a possible landfill restriction on wood waste, or other comparable restriction, will enable rapid development of the opportunity as/when it emerges.


10.0 Reviewed Scenario 4: Reverse Logistics for Wood Sector Businesses.

The concept of take back schemes – ‘reverse logistics’ involves the raw material supplier collecting and taking

back waste from the product that was initially supplied to customers and then acting as a hub to gather the

material for recycling. With the requisite levels of co-ordination and co-operation from all parties involved, it

offers the potential through exploiting spare vehicle capacity to achieve a carbon efficient accumulation of waste

material over a wide geographical area. In some areas however, logistics systems are in place to utilise otherwise

empty return journeys to move other products. The efficiency rate or take up of these systems would determine

what capacity remained available to take back.

A selection of sectors where reverse logistics schemes have become established includes:

Sector or

Material Key Drivers

Main factor enabling

success

Lighting –

fluorescent

tubes

Classed as Hazardous Waste and cannot be mixed with other

wastes for disposal.

HW disposal carries a high treatment/disposal cost per tonne

– recovery options are generally economically cheaper.

Compliance (particularly

producer responsibility

requirements) & cost.

Plasterboard

Ban on co-disposal of plasterboard waste with organic waste

under the Landfill Directive.

High cost per tonne of plasterboard disposal in SNRHW cells

in landfill sites makes recovery through take back services

cheaper.

Increasing costs of new plasterboard manufacture (especially

in terms of energy requirements) make recycling cost

effective for producers.

Construction sector agreements for plasterboard recovery

underpin recovery schemes.

Compliance and cost

Lead acid car

batteries

Classed as Hazardous Waste and cannot be mixed with other

wastes for disposal.

HW disposal carries a high treatment/disposal cost per tonne

– recovery options are generally economically cheaper.

Compliance and cost.

Ink & toner

cartridges

Relatively high value ‘items’ are readily capable of being

reused without loss of quality after re-filling.

Refilling process can be undertaken on a local level without

major capital investment.

Cost – and lack of the need

for environmental permits in

most cases

Table 12: Compliance schemes operating outside the wood sector

There are some attempts evident in the timber industry to apply reverse logistics approaches, although they are

not yet widespread. The following provides a summary of some of those that have been trialled.

10.1 Howarth Timber A two month trial was established in early 2011 to evaluate the potential of reverse logistics as a mechanism for

economically collecting and consolidating wood waste from geographically dispersed SME joinery manufacturing

businesses. The study was established at the headquarters of Howarth Timber on the river Humber in

conjunction with wood recyclers Hadfield and aimed to back haul waste from Howarth Timber’s customers and to

identify pitfalls and provide guidance to other operators who may be considering setting up such a scheme.

The trial focussed on collecting the more exploitable and higher grade wood waste. Howarth’s depot was

provided with two wood skips by a wood recycling body. One was for Grade A wood essentially consisting of

white softwood (although white hardwood was permitted) the other was for Grade B wood and was designed for

dark hardwood and panel products. It was envisaged that these skips would accumulate material from the depot

as well as that returned from customers.

The scheme was organised as follows:

Collection would be made in one cubic metre bulk carrying bags which were low cost, easy to lift and easy to inspect for contamination. The bags could then be filled by the customer and collected by one of Howarth Timber’s delivery drivers. Replacement bags would then be left behind with the customers.


Customers received two bags, one for each grade. It was important that the wood was segregated by the customer rather than at the point of consolidation which would have to have taken place under an

Environmental Permit.

Wood was returned to Howarth Timber’s depot, and transferred to the grade specific skip prior to collection by the wood recycler where it was intended to be processed into animal bedding, biomass or for panel board products.

The trial reportedly proved time consuming to organise and difficult to resource in terms of manpower. It was

noted that no bags were in fact collected from customers and returned to Howarth Timber during the two months

of the trial. This may have been because the bags had not been filled during that period or that they had not

been collected by the delivery driver. Of the 5.3 tonnes of wood that was recovered during the trial all of the

material had been accumulated from the main Howarth depot.

Whist the collection skips were intended for Grade A or Grade B wood, all of the material collected was

downgraded upon inspection by the wood recycler to Grade D due to the inclusion of inappropriate materials.

The experience from this study highlights some key issues which will need to be addressed in order to operate an

effective scheme:

Where collection vessels are provided there is a high risk of receiving contamination which will reduce the quality of the load and is likely to result in financial penalties and will in turn have economic ramifications for the viability of the model.

To run effectively there must be full commitment from all parties involved to invest the required level of time and effort to develop and operate the scheme.

All staff involved in the project will need the appropriate level of training and awareness to ensure that materials are aligned with the appropriate collection containers. There will also be a need for additional checking and possibly sorting prior to collection to avoid the load being down-graded.

Wood waste levels from small businesses are likely to vary considerably in response to their demand for output, which can be difficult to predict. A scheme should therefore require a sufficient number of participating manufacturers to ensure that economically viable volumes of wood can be consolidated.

Evidence from this trial suggests that it failed to produce both the expected volumes and grades of material. It

did prove however, to be a useful exercise in identifying the levels of effort and commitment that are required to

make such a scheme effective.

A key failure in the above trial was that the materials were not correctly segregated on-site. Reasons for this are

likely to be a lack of commitment or a lack of training. Training systems based on the grading system developed

by the Wood Recyclers’ Association and the Environment Agency may be an example of how the shortfall could

be met.

10.2 Duffield Timber

Duffield Timber is a softwood and hardwood importer based in Ripon who implemented a reverse logistics wood

waste collection scheme three years ago. Motivation for the scheme was the potential to gather at low cost a

resource that could be manufactured into biomass pellets for sale in the locality. The scheme uses delivery

vehicles to collect wood waste and initially had 15 – 20 participants, which has since fallen to 2 – 3.

The main reason for the decline in numbers was that the material proved expensive to collect because although

delivery vehicles were used for collection, it made transport logistics more difficult to manage and reduced

delivery options. It was felt that the system would be much easier to manage with customers who provided in the

order 3 – 4 tonnes of wood waste for collection rather than many smaller operations that were only likely to

provide a nominal few bags worth. Conversely, the customers who can provide this level of material would also

be well served by cost effective skip type collections

It was also felt that contamination was an issue as panelboard materials were often present in the wood waste

when collected. When tested, the glues and resins were readily visible in the analysis which reduced potential

applications for the pellets. The scheme was well received by customers and it was felt that if access to landfill

for wood is restricted or withdrawn the appeal to customers would increase. However, the general feeling from

the operator was that whist a good idea initially, the collection logistics have proved very challenging and as a

result the scheme although still operating has declined significantly.


Relatively few take back schemes have been implemented in the timber sector and those that have done have

enjoyed mixed success. It was widely agreed that the concept was popular with customers, and its popularity is

likely to increase if wood is restricted from landfill. The timber sector contains a large number of small operators

who generate low volumes of wood waste on a regular basis, but who are typically geographically widely

dispersed. Major barriers have been identified as:

A high level of organisation and commitment is required both to establish a collection network and to operate. It therefore lends itself to a larger organisation with the capacity to deliver in terms of site storage, vehicle capacity and logistics capability.

Financial returns are likely to be marginal for many prospective operators so a locally specific business case would be required to provide confidence that any given proposal was viable.

For the collector, it is important that both quantity and quality of the received material is predictable and consistent with further processing requirements. A major concern was that of contamination by the inclusion of inappropriate materials and achieving the appropriate quality for the intended end use.

Meeting legislative and regulatory barriers was considered to be a hurdle, but not a substantial barrier for a larger organisation with the capacity to operate such a scheme.

Collection logistics in terms of aligning delivery need and collection needs in terms of frequency and available load space and use of appropriate collection containers were sometimes considered to be challenging. The assumption that reverse logistic schemes would make economic use of otherwise empty vehicles is challenged by findings that logistics are often provided by contractors who allocate empty vehicles to other nearby work – not returning empty to the wood supplier for the next load.

Resistance to changing established patterns of behaviour may be an important factor for a large number of operators who may have established patterns of informal disposal or who simply lack the motivation to change their system. This is however, consistent with the findings of a Defra report of 2010 which highlights that SMEs tend to prefer one-off multi-material collections for all of their recyclates which provide better value for money, but may also reflect storage capacity.

There is a general perception that where enough wood is available to justify reverse logistics solutions,

recovery of wood will already be undertaken using conventional methods such as skip collections, and

reverse logistics may not offer any additional benefit. Reverse logistics scheme may succeed where

suppliers assured demand from producers and users of wood, but this is not a generalised opportunity.

10.3 Conclusions

As with small scale SME wood collections the risks of developing take back schemes are likely to outweigh likely benefits, and again this is mainly due to the difficulties of recruiting participants. Opportunities which exist are likely to be localised, such as where limited wood recovery infrastructure exists in particular localities, and end markets for recovered wood create assured demand for material collected. Such situations will be the exception rather than the rule, and where sources of wood waste and end markets exist the current wood waste infrastructure is likely to achieve recovery effectively.

Direct investment or grants by WRAP in reverse logistics are not likely to stimulate new methods of recovering wood which are viable in the longer term, and may have the impacts of only competing with existing successful recovery routes.

Landfill restrictions would increase the interest in reverse logistics as a wood recovery solution, but this approach is currently of limited interest. Continued engagement with sector bodies such as the Timber Resource Efficiency Partnership (TREP), and trade bodies such as the British Woodworking Federation (BWF and the Timber Trades Federation (TTF) to establish possible best practice and publish agreed case studies for reverse logistics schemes.


11.0 Summary of opportunities

11.1 The organic waste composting sector

There is evidence of strong overlaps between the existing wood recycling and composting sectors –

indicating that substantial amounts of wood waste is already being recovered through these routes.

Some composters already handle significant volumes of wood waste, indicating that there may be

localised opportunities for composters to provide wood collection sites and bulking facilities.

Suitably Permitted composting sites are likely to offer suitable collection hub opportunities for wood

waste, and are likely to have much of the necessary plant and facilities for primary processing of wood

waste.

11.2 Local Authority CA sites

A small number of CAs currently provide non household waste drop off points. Increased access by non-

household wood producers, particularly from construction and demolition activities by small traders may

result in additional fuel grade waste wood becoming available for WID compliant biomass facilities.

While only a minority of CAs sites are likely to be suitable for use as stand-alone Wood Collection Hubs,

the large number of CAs overall should still enable a significant network of new sites to be made

available for non-household waste.

Significant cost savings are likely to be available for implementing wood segregation at source in CAs, by

avoiding some sorting and processing costs for wood waste. The savings may not accrue directly to

Local Authorities, depending on current contract terms with the waste management company contracted

to manage the site (where the local authority has contracted out the provision of this service).

11.3 SME Businesses in the Wood Manufacturing and supply sector

There is currently very limited evidence of smaller scale collections from small businesses in the wood

sector which may be too small (or have too little space) to support skip collections at an economic price.

A requirement to recover wood waste through landfill restrictions would be likely to prompt growth in

this area. This could facilitate the development of wood collection rounds, but is likely to mostly recover

lower grade wood, as clean wood waste is already likely to be recovered from most businesses.

11.4 Recovery of wood through take back schemes

Some smaller scale reverse logistics services already operate. Increased development of reverse logistics

services may offer an alternative route for wood recovery, but would be likely to divert material from

existing recovery routes, rather than increase overall recovery of wood. This may be a more efficient

solution in some localised situations, but the business case will depend on locally specific conditions.

Changes in legislation and regulation – such as landfill prohibitions on wood waste disposal – may

provide further impetus on the part of wood waste producers to improve their wood waste

management, and this may renew interest in take back schemes as an option.


12.0 Conclusions

The wood waste recovery infrastructure operates efficiently to recover high proportions of wood waste from the

available material. The commonly cited assumption that around 2 million tonnes of wood waste is currently

disposed of to landfill is not supported by the available evidence, and this figure is likely to be less than 1 million

tonnes. Where wood waste is currently disposed of without recovering economic or monetary value, this is likely

to be a result of the wood recycling sector being unable to provide economically viable recovery routes because

the material is treated, contaminated, mixed with other wastes and uneconomic to separate or arises in individual

quantities too small to allow for cost effective collection. Most producers who do not recycle or recover wood

produce smaller quantities where there may be no economic benefit to them of recycling, and the cost of

arranging recycling can be high.

To a certain extent, this research was motivated by these assumptions of the quantity of wood waste that is

landfilled. Where a potential feedstock of 2 million tonnes is thought to be available, and the demand for wood

waste, driven especially by the growth in the biomass sector, is increasing, it would be reasonable to suggest that

developing collection hubs or other optimisation of the collection and supply chain would deliver significant new

opportunities. With this much smaller amount of unrecovered wood waste and the commensurate reduction in

available feedstock material these opportunities are more likely to be marginal in impact, success and profitability.

Recycling small quantities of wood is unlikely to deliver cost savings for small waste producers, and without an

obligation or economic incentive, there is a potential market failure in which low grade wood in small quantities

remains unrecovered. This is only likely to be addressed with landfill restrictions for wood waste or other

comparable restriction. This would have the effect of increasing demand for wood waste collections, providing

the critical mass for new collection schemes provided to smaller businesses.

As a result, not all of the four scenarios investigated provided current opportunities for recovering significant

quantities of wood waste, and some may only become viable business models with changes in behaviour of waste

producers. These changes are most likely to be generated, especially in the small businesses in which wood

waste is most often unrecovered, by landfill restrictions, for which Defra launched a consultation on the 31st July

201216 .

Increased collection activity through collections from small businesses and through reverse logistics methods can

be viable in principle , but only where significant numbers of businesses can be recruited rapidly enough to make

the service viable. This difficulty in recruiting enough businesses to these approaches, make this unlikely to

succeed without significant changes in market conditions, or through intervention such as a landfill restriction, for

example. The main barriers are the additional cost and effort of separating smaller quantities of wood for

recycling.

There may be opportunities for composters to operate wood collection hubs, but this is likely to be dependent on

local circumstances and supply and demand factors. This approach is used successfully already by some

composters who tend to either produce wood products for sale such as mulches and equine surfaces, but could

also provide a primary collection point for material that is then processed, graded and sold by wood recycling

specialists in the existing supply chain.

The provision of recycling services to small businesses through CAs (possibly on a fee paying basis) could be

widely applied throughout the UK and would be likely to recover significant quantities of wood waste from many

small producers, particularly in the construction and demolition sector, as well as generating a potential income

stream for Councils (through gate fees or through recovered wood value). The effect would be likely to support

the recovery of additional tonnages of low grade wood material which would otherwise be disposed of to landfill.

This approach would not be likely to compete with existing collection routes as individual quantities would be

small.

16 http://www.defra.gov.uk/consult/2012/07/31/wood-waste/


Appendix 1: Wood Recyclers Association –

Grades of Wood for Recovery

Wood waste Grade

Typical Markets

Typical Sources of Raw Material for Recycling.

Materials within wood waste grade

Typical Non – Wood Content Prior to Processing

Grade A. “Clean” Recycled Wood

Manufacture of products such as animal bedding, horticultural mulches, and the panelboard sector. Fuel in non WID installations, or manufacture of pellets/briquettes.

Distribution. Retailing. Packaging. Secondary manufacture e.g. joinery. Pallets

Solid softwood and hardwood, Packaging waste, scrap pallets, packing cases, and cable drums. Process off-cuts from joinery/manufacturing.

Nails and metal fixings. Minor amounts of paint, and surface coatings.

Grade B. Industrial Feedstock Grade

A feedstock for Industrial wood processing operations such as the manufacture of panel products, including chipboard and medium density fibreboard.

As Grade A, plus construction and demolition operations and Transfer Stations.

May contain up to 60% Grade A material as above, plus building and demolition materials and domestic furniture made from solid wood.

Nails/metal fixings. Some paints, plastics, glass, grit, coatings, binders and glues. Limits on treated or coated materials as defined by WID.

Grade C. Fuel Grade.

Biomass fuel for use in the generation of electricity and/or heat in WID compliant installations.

All above plus Municipal Collections, Recycling Centres Transfer Stations And Civic Amenity Recycling sites

All of the above plus fencing products, flat pack furniture made from board products and DIY materials. High content of panel products such as chipboard, MDF, plywood, OSB and fibreboard.

Nails and metal fixings. Paints coatings and glues, paper, plastics and rubber, glass, grit. Coated and treated timber (non CCA or creosote).

Grade D Hazardous Waste

Requires disposal at special facilities

All of the above plus fencing, track work and transmission pole contractors.

Fencing Transmission Poles Railway sleepers Cooling towers

Copper / Chrome / Arsenic preservation Treatments Creosote


Appendix 2: Scenarios investigated

Primary (shaded) and secondary (unshaded) collection schemes.

Scenario description

Possible options for

additional wood

recovery

Overall

assessment

in initial desk

study

Potenti

al

tonnage

of wood

waste

Comment

s on

estimated

tonnages

Conclusion

s

1. Regular (e.g. weekly) collections of wood waste from smaller waste producers in commercial waste bins as a bin emptying service using specialist bin lifting vehicles.

‘Bin’ collections from smaller producers – larger producers tend to use on demand skip collections (option 3 below). There is scope for modelling possible wood waste arisings using data on numbers of wood businesses to assess possible arisings, but there is significant informal disposal (see 10 below) which accounts for some tonnage.

Little evidence of bin lift collections used currently for wood. The need to achieve route density to make a collections viable has held back investment in specialist bin lifting vehicles.

200,000

High uncertainty – there are few direct sources of evidence which indicate how much is produced and how much is currently recovered. This is an approximate estimate.

Selected for detailed assessment in this report.

2. On demand skip collections of segregated wood waste – not mixed with other waste, but possibly including mixed wood grades.

Accounts for a large proportion of overall wood waste recovered. This approach is mostly used by larger producers of wood waste, and those with space for siting skips for collection of waste. Enables recovery of into higher value markets, than where wood waste is mixed with other wastes.

The largest current scenario for wood recovery, with outputs sold into the panelboard, animal bedding, mulch & landscaping sectors, with excess & low graded materials sold into fuel or export markets.

2,200,000

Low uncertainty. This is the main scenario for collection of wood waste by the wood recycling sector, and data is published on total amounts recovered

This scenario already operates with high efficiency and a competitive market for wood feedstock ensures high levels of recovery.

3. ‘Take Back’ schemes, including ‘reverse logistics’ - where ‘new’ offcuts and production waste is returned for recovery

Little use of this option for wood currently – although potential savings on transport costs through backhauling may make this attractive.

A small number of pilot schemes are in place with large wood suppliers. Where viable for expansion, this could provide options for smaller wood businesses.

100,000

This may provide an alternative cost effective route to skip collections.


4. Civic Amenity Recycling Centres (http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/business-waste-recycling-projects-trade-bring-sites)

Large tonnages - generally collected as mixed wood waste. This may then be processed through sorting in the transfer or MRF sector.

Offers substantial potential as a ‘drop off point’ for small producers of C&I wood waste.

600,000 Low uncertainty. There is good evidence of total wood waste handled through CAs.



5. Composting operations processing wood wastes

Composting is the end market for a significant amount of wood waste, including the possibility of some low grades not generally considered suitable for composting.

Evidence that significant wood, included mixed wood grades, is received by composters. Composting would represent a low value market, but composting sites are likely to have the facilities and permits to operate wood recovery operations.

250,000

Low uncertainty. Good regulatory data for permitted operations enables an assessment of the total wood tonnage received by compost operations for processing


6. Mobile shredders Bulking/densifying wood waste by onsite shredding (or breaking to reduce size) to enable cost effective collection. Not including operations where shredders are used to enable onsite disposal – e.g. in Arboricultural sector. Only likely to be suitable where large amounts of a single known grade of wood is produced, or for low value markets such as WID compliant biomass, as shredded wood cannot be subsequently sorted by types.

Some evidence of successful services including mobile waste wood shredding was located, but this is no more than a method used for bulking wood waste from fairly large producers prior to collection using skips.

Not substantial

High uncertainty, but this is not an important recovery route, and duplicates tonnage included in other scenarios (especially 2 above)

This has only been found to operate as a means of collecting wood from larger producers which then receive skip collections (covered in 2 above), and not a means of recovering additional wood waste.

7. Community Recycling Operations

Including organisations currently recovering wood largely in the not for profit sector, including training schemes, employment creation projects etc. Offers high value recovery and re-use, with significant social benefits.

There is a wide range of community and third sector projects involved in furniture re-use and wood recycling. They generally operate on a small scale and are selective in the material they can handle.

15,000 – 20,000

Good data is available on community wood recycling and re-use projects, but their scale makes limited impacts on total wood waste.

Important in term of social benefits achieved, and high value recovery, but this option is not able to recover large quantities of lower grade wood.

8. Collections from skip hire and simple sorting operations

A secondary collection scenario, involving collection by wood recovery specialists from transfer stations providing services to original producers. This scenario has excluded specialist wood waste only operations, which appear in 13 below.

Large quantities of wood waste are handled by skip hire and sorting operations, and transfer stations, although the recovery rate is high. Unrecovered wood is the result of low quality or high contamination.

2,500,000 Good regulatory data indicates the wood outputs from transfer operations – although may not fully capture unrecovered wood within mixed wastes.

Includes significant overlap with skip collection scenario (see 2 above)


9. Outputs of wood waste from MRF operators

Facilities processing wastes from primary sources through an integrated mechanical process to sort into separate material fractions for different end uses. This will include a range of processes, possibly including hand picking, and may involve pre-treatments such as basic shredding to facilitate mechanical processing.

Significant tonnage of wood waste recovered, often from smaller businesses and households, but often into WDF fuel or low value markets. Landfill disposal of wood may take place where no markets exist or quality/ contamination prevents recovery.

230,000 Medium uncertainty – regulatory data provides good indications of how much wood is recovered from mixed wastes by MRFs, but does not indicate how much remains unrecovered, or is used in WDF.

These operations probably already achieve the best available recovery efficiency for wastes collected – further increases in wood recovery would require changes in collection arrangements.

10. Other bulking, specialist sorting and processing operations

Includes tertiary collection processes, and includes bulk biomass operations which source material from the secondary sector such as Scenarios 2, 8 and 9 above.

Includes material classified and assessed at an earlier point in the supply chain, and included in those scenarios – these operations do not generally source material directly from waste producers, other than large producers in the forestry sector.

1,300,000 High uncertainty – commercial confidentiality makes total tonnages difficult to estimate – the waste itself is generally not regulated using transfer notes, and no regulatory records of movements exists.

Does not provide a means for recovery of additional wood waste beyond that already included in other scenarios. Not considered further in this report.

11. Supply chain associated with the packaging recovery note system

Overlaps with all other recovery routes – this does not occur as a separate category of activity, other than for pallet re-use operations. Some wood recyclers are also accredited re-processors and able to issue PRNs, but the value in doing so is currently low.

Not a separate collection scenario. The ability to sell PRNs on recovered wood packaging does underpin values for wood waste. In practice, the current recovery target is too low to have a significant impact.

(600,000) Low uncertainty – this is a well regulated sector with good data, but the tonnages concerned are being recovered through other routes.

Does not provide a means for recovery of additional wood waste beyond that already included in other scenarios. Not considered further in this report.


12. Processing of Waste Derived Fuels (WDF) which include a wood element.

Functions as an output for waste not recoverable through a higher value route. Composition of WDF is variable, but wood is only a small fraction of WDF – typically no more than 5-10%.

This scenario is evaluated, but operates as an output market for the secondary routes above, rather than a collection scenario as such.

800,000 High uncertainty – the proportion of wood within waste derived fuels is not routinely sampled, as the main consideration is calorific value and physical attributes such as particle size and moisture content. Rough estimates suggest a range between 2% and 10% by dry weight of supplied fuels.

The wider market in waste derived fuels is outside the scope of this report.

13. Informal recovery

Recovery/use of waste wood through unregulated methods – such as selling or giving away offcuts and kindling material in local markets, use as biomass fuels by home users, or in biomass installations within the business itself. This provides free disposal of fairly small quantities which would otherwise carry a collection cost

This is very common amongst businesses which produce small to medium quantities of wood waste – especially clean timber where no regulatory controls apply, and it is suitable for non WID compliant biomass.

250,000

High uncertainty – use of wood waste informally is well known, but establishing quantities amongst many thousands of small producers would be complex and costly.

This is discussed within the report, but is not a separate collection scenario.

14. Wood collected within mixed waste for disposal, or not recovered for other reasons.

Included as default category to indicate the remaining wood which is unrecovered, and may require significant changes in collection and disposal practice to be captured within one of the scenarios above.

The figure set out here includes all forms of disposal, and is not an estimate only of the landfilled total.

While undertaking a full wood mass balance is outside the scope of this report, it seems likely that the total amount of wood landfilled is substantially less than has been commonly assumed - as little as 19,000 tonnes nationally in 2010 (see Figure 1), and will usually be for good reasons, such as contamination, as landfill is prohibitively expensive compared to other options.

Up to 1,300,000

High uncertainty. With incineration accounting for around a quarter of net MSW disposed of (after recycling has been deducted from the total), this could indicate a total unrecovered tonnage of wood waste to landfill of about 1m tonnes.

Wood which is landfilled is generally a component within mixed waste, and not separated wood which can simply be diverted to other recovery options. Increased material recovery will therefore depend on changes in collection practices, and probably behaviour change by producers.


Appendix 3: Explanatory notes for Fig.3

The following points should be noted in interpreting the diagram:

Not all linkages are shown for reasons of space, and to simplify the diagram to a level that can be visually

understood. Wood waste from all sources may reach virtually any nodes in the supply chain for individual

producers and wood waste types but the potentially important routes are shown.

At the initial stage, the producer decides whether to manage their waste themselves or through informal

routes; to take it themselves to the next node in the supply chain (generally only the larger producers or

arrange for its collection by a third party. In practice a waste producer may adopt more than one for different

types of wood waste – so it is possible for some wood to be taken for household biomass combustion and

some disposed of as mixed waste.

Take back and drop off schemes are limited mainly to large wood waste producers and householders

respectively, but both represent potentially valuable additional options for smaller producers if suitable

collection hubs can be developed.

Collections in bins are primarily used for mixed wood grades and mixed waste. As more MRF facilities become

operational in the future, it is likely that the proportion of wood recovered from wholly mixed wastes will

increase and the probable end market will be WID compliant biomass due mainly to contamination.

Skips collections from industrial producers will tend to be wholly or mostly of a single grade, with collections

priced accordingly. Construction and demolition wastes will generally be of mixed grades of wood, and for

smaller construction works, will include mixed C&D wastes more generally.

More than one primary processor, such as transfer stations and MRF may handle the material to ensure it is

bulked up, sorted or processed into marketable quantities and grades. The relative sizes of the outputs are

particularly difficult to show clearly for this stage due to constraints of space, but the key linkages appear.

Some of the end markets may themselves be producers of wood wastes, or suppliers to other end markets or

both. Composters in particular are identified here as potential suppliers into additional end markets to

increase overall recovery and better apply the Waste Hierarchy.

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