Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of witnesses (Questions 440 - 459)

TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 1998

MR BRYAN BATEMAN, MR ALAN MCKENDRICK and MR JOHN GOODALL

  440.  Can I ask what your opinion is of the waste hierarchy and how confident we should be that composting occupies an appropriate position within it?
  (Mr Walker)  Perhaps I could first just define what I mean by sustainable very briefly before answering the question. I think the view of the Composting Association sustainable waste management must be a policy which minimises the environmental impact of waste collection, disposal and recovery whilst being reasonable within a country;s overall macroeconomic position, and I think that the trouble is that sustainability is probably easier to define in terms of what it is not rather than what it is. If I could just give you a very brief example, Mr Chairman, recently I was in Portugal and Portugal has recently produced an entirely new waste management strategy in 18 months which relies almost entirely on European Union funding. Now the problem I think with the Portuguese strategy is that they are now imposing costs for waste collection disposal on individual householders which are actually greater than the entire cost of local government services for the rest of the services, and I think that that is actually unsustainable because I think that the problem is that first of all people will not accept it and secondly I think therefore that they will not achieve their strategy. I think that it is important that any waste management policy, whether it is in the United Kingdom or anywhere else, should actually be overall affordable. I appreciate that ultimately that may not in fact lead to the nirvana that some people may expect for waste management currently, but certainly local authorities capping it is very difficult to achieve anything other than very small steps. The second question asked about the waste hierarchy. I think that generally the waste hierarchy is acceptable, but I think that the important thing, certainly from our point of view, is to bear in mind that you should consider all waste management situations on a case by case basis. You cannot use life cycle analysis and come to a conclusion that energy incineration without energy recovery is better than composting or composting is better than that. I think that you have to look at the overall life cycle analysis of it. The other point that I would just like to make is that if you take the logic of the landfill tax to its logical conclusion, then there should be an equal levy on incineration without energy recovery that there is on landfill.

  441.  Can I just press you a bit further on that. Studies have been done about the relative impact of composting versus landfill which itself in a proper engineered way creates methane and thus a valuable energy, some would say.
  (Mr Walker)  There have been a limited number of studies in this country, but most of the studies have actually been done in America on landfill versus composting by the Environmental Protection Agency, which I think is probably ten years ahead of our agency, and they found that even in the most sanitary landfills they only captured up to 70 per cent of the methane so that 30 per cent of the methane is in fact escaping from the most sanitary ones and almost by definition therefore in the less sanitary landfills more methane than that is actually escaping from the process. However, in a properly managed composting operation there are no anaerobic pockets and therefore there is no methane production.
  (Mr Middlemass)  Can I just follow that point up by going back to the waste hierarchy, Mr Chairman. Obviously the higher you go up the waste hierarchy the less likelihood there is of there being environmental impact from composting. One of the things that the Community Composting Network perceives is that home composting and community composting keeps organic waste out of the waste stream and perhaps it should be acknowledged not as recycling but as reduction itself if you perceive reduction from that point of view. The other thing—and this follows up what Michael Walker has said—is that composting should be perceived as something where you separate out organic waste from other forms of domestic waste and only that should be called composting whereas so-called dirty composting where you actually compost a mixture of household waste should not be perceived as composting, so separation should be higher up in the waste hierarchy.

  442.  Could I just ask briefly, Mr Chairman, what percentage terms are going into this? Most people in their back gardens do their own composting anyway, so what percentage are you looking for? How much do you think actual garden waste is going to go into disposal?
  (Mr Middlemass)  One of the things about making waste work, Mr Chairman, is that it acknowledges the contributions of all scales so that there is a role for centralised composting and there is a role for smaller scale schemes. I think that the current amount of people composting at home and composting at community level is not as high as it could be. The Government have set a target of 40 per cent of households with gardens to compost at home and by 2000 I think that that is an achievable figure. I think that it could be higher.

Chairman

  443.  You talk about well run composting. Have you any idea how many are well run?
  (Mr Walker)  In the state of composting in the United Kingdom, Mr Chairman, which is a survey that the Composting Association has just completed, we discovered that there are now 60 currently operating composting sites in the United Kingdom, which is a 500 per cent increase since 1992, and only three of the respondents from the survey have actually shut down between 1992 and 1997 because of operational problems and the only other operating ones reported problems either with the Environment Agency or with members of the public. I would not say, however, that that necessarily means that they are being operated as well perhaps as some of them could be because I think that there is a lack of information currently on how to run composting sites in the United Kingdom.

  444.  I was not really interested particularly in local authority and other ones that are run on a reasonable scale. I am really much more interested in everybody's back garden where I suspect that a lot of them do not avoid gas emission and leachate escape. Have you any idea how good individual households are?
  (Mr Walker)  I think that that is a figure that it would be very difficult to estimate. I think that there has been some research in Sweden on the efficiency of home composting and I think that the research found that the majority of people who are composting at home understood the composting process but it identified an on going need for continuing public education, which I think is the same for the local authority schemes as well as bins which are sold by garden centres. There is a need to explain the composting process.
  (Mr Middlemass)  I think that that is one of the dangers of the local authority home composting projects. They are very good at distributing bins to people, but they are less good at educating people how to use them correctly so that there may have been an increase in the percentage of bad home composting as a result of recent local authority schemes. That is a thing that we are concerned about therefore. Perhaps the community sector is better placed to educate people how to compost at home than the local authorities themselves.

Mrs Ellman

  445.  I would like just to explore the potential for increasing composting. Would you like to say how you would go about increasing the level of composting and who should be doing that?
  (Mr Walker)  Would you like centralised composting or home composting or both?

  446.  I think both.
  (Mr Walker)  Certainly in terms of home composting 75 per cent of the best 25 schemes or the best recycling rates for local authorities in the United Kingdom have been achieved by local authorities who have a centralised composting operation. I think that that shows what can be achieved by composting. That is not however, to under-estimate the problems that any other local authorities have in trying to set up composting operations, and they fall into two areas. The first is economics. The problem is that the economics of composting are that it is quite expensive to set up a composting operation and the withdrawal of supplementary credit approvals has in the opinion of the Composting Association significantly slowed down the growth of composting in recent years. Between 1992 and 1995 the most substantial growth in composting operations took place—and that was when supplementary credit approvals were available for compost—and since 1996 when supplementary credit approvals were withdrawn from composting operations the slow down in terms of new sites has been very significant. The problem of the economics of composting is that you can set up a well managed composting operation for about £20 a tonne but unfortunately most landfill prices are still slightly less than £20 a tonne so it is not economically advantageous for the private sector or for local authorities to set up a composting operation. Therefore, in our evidence, Mr Chairman, we have given some ideas of how the capital costs of composting sites can be met. The other problem with composting is actually collecting waste from the kerbside. Now a lot of the figures that you see quoted by the Environment Agency and by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions is that source aggregation schemes, as we call them, separate collections, often say that it costs about £80 a tonne, and that is correct if it is a separate collection. What has worked most successfully in the schemes in the United Kingdom and in Sweden is where you integrate the collection of organic material one week with residual waste in the other week so that you have what is known as an integrated alternate weekly collection. Also, of course, that is a changing culture for the United Kingdom, but it is something which has worked very well in the Netherlands in Germany.

Chairman

  447.  I am sorry, can you just explain that a bit more simply?
  (Mr Walker)  I am sorry, yes, Mr Chairman, the terminology is very difficult. In the United Kingdom we have a culture in the recycling industry where you have separate collections for different feedstocks, for example, newspaper would be collected in a blue bin or plastic bag and you would collect your existing refuse, whether it is in a wheel bin or in a dustbin, on a weekly basis. Now the problem with separate collections is that they are very expensive so therefore almost by definition if you have two collections a week for refuse instead of one the cost is twice as much. In order to get round this problem the concept of alternate weekly collections has been introduced into a number of authorities in this country and also broadly in the rest of Europe where in the first week in the wheel bin you collect your refuse and in the second week you would collect the organic material, the garden waste, the kitchen organics, and thereby you actually have the existing collection cost. The extra cost, of course, is a one off cost to pay for the second wheel bin or however you collect your organic waste.

Christine Butler

  448.  But in a warm summer that would mean that it would be waiting in an enclosed bag for two weeks?
  (Mr Walker)  Yes, that is a very good point. As a Composting Association we would not recommend the use of a plastic bag for alternate collections. We would recommend that you use a wheel bin. There have been a lot of studies that have been done in the United Kingdom of people who are concerned over the life cycle of maggots and flies to examine whether or not there is a problem with that and all of the evidence strongly suggests that there is no problem alternate weekly collections and they have proven very popular in a number of authorities in the country.

Chairman

  449.  Can you give us one example?
  (Mr Walker)  The most successful scheme in England is one that is operated by what is now known as North Lincolnshire Council which was formerly Scunthorpe Borough Council, and that actually has achieved a recycling rate in the area where they introduced the twin bin collection of over 40 per cent, which I think is actually the highest recycling rate that I am aware of in the United Kingdom at the present time.
  (Mr Middlemass)  I reiterate, Mr Chairman, on the use of plastic bins the risk of problems from organic waste is taken away by using plastic bins, as Michael Walker said.

Mrs Ellman

  450.  What about community composting?
  (Mr Middlemass)  I outlined earlier the range of benefits of composting at a smaller level and I think that that needs to be got across to people better in government education, that is, that composting is not just about making compost, it is also about recycling and community activity on the other hand. The previous group of people here were talking about landfill tax and again we would agree that the landfill tax could be a lot higher, and that could promote more community composting. However, the particular issue that we are in discussion about with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions at the moment is to do with the waste management regulations which are proving prohibitive to community composting. Most community composting, to be able either to sell community compost, have to apply for a licence which costs £700 and that is far too high for most small scale schemes and we are currently in negotiation with the Department to revise those regulations. I would certainly like to make the point here, Mr Chairman, that it is important that those benefit community composting if it is to be continued.

  451.  Targets have been set down in Making Waste Work. Do you think that those are achievable and what changes do we need to make them so?
  (Mr Middlemass)  I will mention the home composting targets that I mentioned earlier and I will let Michael Walker talk about the other two targets. The target in Making Waste Work is 40 per cent of households with a garden to do home compost by 2000 and, as I said earlier, I think that that is achievable, particularly if the community sector takes more of a role in getting people to use the home compost bins that are delivered to them by local authorities because at the present time there may well be 40 per cent of households with home composters but it is debatable whether they are actually used.

Christine Butler

  452.  You said that if composting was not done properly there would be emissions. Can you tell us whether you have an estimate of the methane that might be produced from inefficient composting schemes?
  (Mr Walker)  From centralised sites or in back gardens?

  453.  Anything that you have figures on?
  (Mr Walker)  Certainly on a centralised scale, again, the only research that I am aware of has been carried out in America and that found in respect of most of their composting sites—and obviously it is very difficult because they have a lot more than we do—they found that 90 per cent of the composting sites in the USA were not emitting methane.

  454.  And of those that were?—you see, I am just trying to compare this with other types of waste disposal options and particularly what would happen to the degradables and landfill?
  (Mr Walker)  Certainly currently it is true to say that landfill does not release carbon dioxide, but in the opinion of Dr Jane Gilbert, who is the technical research director of the Composting Association, landfill sites which actually flare off methane certainly probably are producing more carbon dioxide than a composting site and they are certainly producing more methane. Therefore, it is more of a case by case basis rather than comparing good and bad.

  455.  What about the smell and the dust and immediate atmosphere problems that these stations cause to residential areas?
  (Mr Walker)  The Composting Association is obviously aware of people's concerns about composting sites because they are commonly perceived as waste facilities rather than recycling facilities and there are two particular concerns which we have identified. The first is odours and the second is what we call bioaerosols, which are micropollutants. In terms of odours it is true to say that a well managed composting site will produce a mild odour. Anybody who would say that composting does not smell is not frankly telling the truth. However, composting sites produce a very mild odour which is not detectable within about 150 metres of the site and

(? ... ?) composting sites can produce an odour within a kilometre of the nearest property, and I have been in America where even more composting sites smell at five kilometres, and I would not disguise that. One of the things that the Composting Association is doing to address that issue at the present time, as I mentioned earlier, Mr Chairman, is to produce a guidance for compost site operators in the United Kingdom about how to run a well managed composting site. What we would like to encourage is for the Environment Agency to write into composting site operator licences those as conditions of how to run composting sites so that in other words you would have a set of conditions to monitor against.

  456.  So you think the regulations that will be coming from the Environment Agency would be better, but do you think this would be better in terms of not just the efficiency of the composting but also in terms of the effectiveness and the commercial side and that it would be beneficial to the industry if we were to work that way rather than leave matters to the planning regime at local authority level which is trying to mitigate disasters?
  (Mr Walker)  Yes, I think that that is a very good point. I think PPG 23 or PPG 10, as it will become, very clearly distinguishes between what is a planning consideration and what is a waste licensing consideration.

  457.  Has there been a comparison in the best environmental option as between the large scale enclosed composting scheme such as we have in continental Europe and open composting linked with home composting here, taking into consideration travel, journey times and what that might mean as well?
  (Mr Walker)  There has been a European Union report, Mr Chairman, and I can give the reference to the Committee if you would like, which does look at that. However, the main flaw with that report is the fact that it assumes no beneficial use for the end material of the compost which actually therefore comes out against large centralised composting schemes. If you were actually able to put in some value for the compost—not a monetary value but an environmental value—then that does actually fundamentally change the economics of it and that has actually been acknowledged now by other people who have written the report. Again, however, there is insufficient research actually to answer your question definitively.
  (Mr Middlemass)  Mr Chairman, perhaps I can just follow up what Michael Walker has said in terms of your fears about environmental effects from composting. This will inevitably be reduced the smaller the scale of the compost. Also, as you go up the hierarchy towards community and home composting the distance between the point at which the waste is produced and then dealt with is reduced and that reduces the need for unnecessary transport.

Chairman

  458.  You did tell us about the question of the supplementary credit approvals. Do you have anything at all to add on that?
  (Mr Walker)  If I may just give you an example of a bad practice in the first instance, there was a situation in Leicestershire where both Leicester City Council and Leicestershire County Council were granted supplementary credit approval for composting sites and material recycling facilities, and both the composting site and the material recycling facilities were constructed within five miles of each other. Now that, I think, is a very bad example of how supplementary credit approval is handled because there is no economic justification or any other justification for having four sites so closely together. However, supplementary credit approvals were the major funding course for composting sites. If supplementary credit approvals could be brought back specifically for composting what I would like to suggest is what would be a two stage process. That would be that in the first instance an application would be made jointly perhaps to a committee of the Department of the Environment and the Environment Agency which would consider the need for a composting site in that particular locality and would approve it in principle, but that a local authority did not then have to spend that allocation in 12 months because obviously getting planning permission and actually setting up a composting site for most waste recovery is very difficult within 12 months and I think they should then be given two years actually to achieve then and then when they have actually got planning permission and are in a position to go ahead with it they can make a second stage application to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and to the Environment Agency for the release of those funds. I think that there would be an advantage to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions in that, which is that in previous years there was a significant underspend of supplementary credit approvals for recycling because it was very difficult for local authorities actually to spend their money. Therefore, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions would actually be able to see a more efficient use of their funds and they would also have a much better infrastructure set up in the country.

Dr Whitehead

  459.  I note that you would also like to get your hands on the landfill tax?
  (Mr Walker)  Yes.


 
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