Paul Killoughery, managing director of Bio Collectors, looks at food waste in England’s capital, saying London’s problems stretch further than just a lack of space and high rise buildings…
The food waste debate has had yet another shot in the arm recently with WRAP announcing its latest plans to reduce the resource needed to provide our food and drink by one-fifth over ten years. Courtauld 2025 has been signed by businesses up and down the country, who are committing to reducing food and drink waste in the UK by 20 percent.
This is potentially great news for the environment. Food manufacturers that have signed up to the commitment produce a large amount of waste (4m tonnes according to FareShare), as do retailers. However, I’m not convinced that there is enough focus on changing the attitudes of householders who contribute around half of all food waste. Ultimately, it is this that will deliver the biggest benefit to the environment.
Food waste is a particular issue in London. Today, there are more than 8.5m people living in our capital city, with the Mayor predicting an increase to 11m by 2050. Somehow we manage to squeeze 5,197 Londoners into every square km. Of the 3m-plus households, a large number are flats – as much as 80 percent in some boroughs, which makes separation an issue due to the quantities produced and lack of space to house bins.
It’s the political landscape of London that makes it such a challenging region to implement change. There are 33 local authorities within London – to put that into perspective, Scotland, which is almost 60 times larger, has just 32
Rates of recycling become exponentially lower as the density of population increases. Waste collection from flats is particularly challenging and few boroughs manage to effectively separate food waste from these locations. In high rise buildings residents are required to repeatedly walk up and down stairs with bags of rubbish and it is easy to see why they may choose a simple life and keep all types of waste together for quicker disposal.
However, in my opinion, London’s problems stretch further than just a lack of space and high rise buildings. It’s the political landscape of London that makes it such a challenging region to implement change. There are 33 local authorities within London – to put that into perspective, Scotland, which is almost 60 times larger, has just 32. Each of these are free to implement their own waste management strategy, so across London you see some households provided with separate food waste caddies, while others have to mix all their waste together. There’s not another city in England where this is the case.
Thankfully there is some joined up thinking, with a number of councils joining forces to form joint waste authorities, such as the South London Waste Partnership – which covers Kingston, Croydon, Sutton and Merton. They have helped move towards a more consistent approach to waste collection and disposal. Crucially it has led to the four boroughs working towards “minimising the climate changing impact of managing municipal solid waste, through effective and efficient diversion from landfill”.
Despite being part of a joint authority, working towards the same goal, only three of the authorities have introduced separate food waste collections, but Sutton continues to collect mixed waste.
Bio Collectors’ AD plant sits in the London borough of Merton, an area that does segregate its household food waste. However it is worth noting that the household food waste from Merton is not recycled in an AD plant in Merton. Instead, it is transported outside London to Bedfordshire at huge cost and huge carbon footprint. The AD plant is located just 100m away from Sutton, where they don’t even offer separate household food waste collections. One must ask the question “why”? It can’t surely be because of cost, as the other three members wouldn’t have done it. We are fully behind the partnerships, but there needs to be a more cohesive approach to all collection and disposal of different types of waste.
Another of these partnerships, the East London Waste Authority, has seen Redbridge, Newham, Havering and Barking and Dagenham enter a long term contract with Shanks. While, the deal has undoubtedly led to increase the amount of waste being recycled and composted, with a significant reduction in the amount sent to landfill, there is little mention of increased anaerobic digestion in planned improvements.
Even by conservative estimates 890,000 tonnes of consumer food waste is produced in London a year, the question is: should in excess 800,000 tonnes end up elsewhere?
According to WRAP, 18 of London’s 33 local authorities provide separate food waste collections. Yes, Courtauld 2025 will put pressure on manufacturers and retailers to reduce their avoidable waste, but if we’re to make a real difference we need consumers to move away from a throwaway society, to a place where food and drink is only thrown away as a last resort. And when it does reach that point, only the most environmentally friendly processes should be used to recycle the waste.
At the moment AD capacity in London is only around half full. Bio Collectors is the largest of the three AD plants in London giving a total London processing capacity of less than 200,000 tonnes per year. Even by conservative estimates 890,000 tonnes of consumer food waste is produced in London a year, the question is: should in excess 800,000 tonnes end up elsewhere? Yes, some will be treated through in-vessel composting, which is certainly better than incineration, but a large proportion will end going to incineration mixed in with general waste. An increasing proportion is also being exported for incineration in Europe.
Lack of segregation of food waste also has a major effect on the collection of dry mixed recycling (DMR). Over the last year contamination of the DMR waste stream with wet food waste has lead to much of the waste being rejected and ending up in incineration. The major waste companies have been increasing the rates they charge their commercial customers for DMR to reflect the higher cost of incineration rather than recycling.
Perhaps also worth reflecting on the increase support for incineration in London with new capacity being developed which will need to be fed to make commercial sense. The waste hierarchy does not allow separated food waste to be incinerated. So in effect segregation may be being discouraged in order to fill incineration plants.
The UK Government has said that it has no plans to force councils to adopt household food waste collections and wants to give them the flexibility to adopt solutions suitable to their area. With so many different boroughs working within London, the creation of the joint authorities is an excellent idea as it should, in practice, help create a consistent approach. However, if we have serious ambitions to reduce the impact on the environment we need to ensure that the most environmentally friendly processes are considered across London and this does not necessarily mean at a higher cost.
