After successful trials, Veolia has found a way to treat the 25% of green waste that is destined for disposal or composting. The new process required a £1M investment in order to adapt the cleaning line to eliminate contamination from 30,000 tonnes of extra compost each year in four locations in the South of England. The compost material is transformed into a clean wood product similar to gardening mulch, or renewable biomass fuel for electricity and heating.
Thanks to this new process, the number of trees cut down for wood is minimized, and the quality of compost is improved, while at the same time, making the composting sites more efficient, lowering disposal costs, and reducing GHG impact. The plant also hopes to find a use for the contaminants that are removed and achieve zero waste to landfill. So far, the new process has been applied to over 55,000 tonnes of compost oversize.
Currently, Veolia processes over 500,000 tonnes of green and food waste annually from 11 composting sites that produce over 250,000 tonnes per year. An estimated 25% of green waste was categorized as oversize after composting, since some green waste bins have plastic and metal, mistakenly thrown away by customers. If a site runs out of storage space, or if the oversize is too contaminated to re-circulate, there is a cost for landfilling which in turn contributes to greenhouse emissions.
Donald Macphail, Chief Operating Officer – Treatment at Veolia said “Composting sites provide the perfect example of a circular economy, and the need to efficiently process this material is likely to increase with the prospect of green waste becoming free to collect and on a more regular basis, as pledged in the government’s Resources and Waste Strategy.
“By backing this new innovation we have increased the effectiveness of operations and will provide additional high quality sustainable wood mulch and renewable fuels. This will help horticulture and renewable energy generation, and is another key step that we are taking to reduce environmental impact and advance towards a lower carbon economy.”