Kitchen Waste: Does it AD up?

CRN UK coordinator Andy Moore considers the UK's capacity to deliver Defra's preferred solution...

Congratulations to ECT Recycling on having secured a new all-singing, all-dancing contract for Somerset. This is where they have pioneered kitchen waste collections and where the real cutting-edge in domestic recycling collections is at. And this is where we’re getting to the kind of undertaking that really needs the attention to detail and public interface that the third sector knows how to deliver. ECT estimates that it currently runs 40% of separate food waste collections in England.

We should be praising the keen local authorities who are instituting kitchen waste collections and we do, but there has been some jumping of the gun, it needs to be said. There is already too little processing capacity for the kitchen waste collections there are. Some of the Somerset kitchen arisings are dealt with inside the county, and some is sent up to Greenfinch in Shropshire. Meanwhile Bristol’s potato peelings are currently being processed in southern Dorset. There is something so right about householders without their own composting facilities being able to have their caddy contents carted away, but a coming carbon crime, one can’t help feeling, if such distances are not shortened soon.

Joan Ruddock has taken the unusual step of saying officially that Defra thinks anaerobic digestion to be the right way forward for food waste. She is surely right that it is one way forward, and one that will deal with much of the food waste of the next generation. There is a huge role for AD. It may well have a better carbon footprint tonne for tonne than aerobic in-vessel composting. However, we can’t help noticing that the size of some of the AD plants under discussion are an order of magnitude even larger; ones that can take the projected putrescibles of two counties or more. So whilst Somerset and Bristol are no doubt already commissioning new capacity close to home, there are likely to be some serious stretchings of the proximity principle yet to come. Plus ça change… are Defra and local authorities still stuck in the mentality that a big problem needs a big solution?

However, recent discussions among community composters and others in this sector gives me hope. There is small scale AD. There are also aerobic, in-vessel solutions capable of APBR compliance which would handle the food waste of a small town and outlying villages, say 10khh, very nicely. The logistics and management would be well within the capabilities of most of the existing organisations in this sector. The local community could shine and deliver its own kitchen waste solutions. Better than just collecting, while doing so it could persuade those households who could compost to do so and to put out less. The vehicle would pass their house every week, whatever. Rough calculations suggest this could be done for under £200/t, which starts to look competitive. Please do your own sums and get back to me: we need to work on a model.