Insight into the technical issues that local authorities should address when considering separate food waste collections. Presented by AEA's Brian Mayne at RWM with CIWM, September 2012.

1. Choosing a Food Waste collection
scheme …
Brian Mayne
Waste Management & Resource Efficiency
AEA
12th September 2012
Presented @ RWM(2012)

2. Who am I?
+ Waste & Resource Efficiency Consultant at AEA
+ Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management
+ CIWM Centre Councillor
+ Chartered Environmentalist
+ ISWA International Waste Manager International Status.
+ Expert Advisor to the National Assembly of Wales on waste
management
+ Local Government & Consultancy background
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3. My sponsor - www.aeat.co.uk
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4. Why Food Waste?
+ Around 6.7 million tonnes of food waste is produced by UK
households – that’s about one-fifth of total household waste.
Collecting food waste separately for recycling offers a wide range of
potential benefits, e.g.:
- contributing to targets for diverting biodegradable waste from landfill;
- improving recycling rates;
- reducing waste disposal costs as landfill costs increase;
- reducing environmental impacts associated with landfill (toxicity in leachate,
landfill gas emissions, etc.);
- reducing greenhouse gas emissions by removing the putrescent content from
landfill sites;
- production of compost and liquid fertilisers for use as a soil improver;
- generation of heat and power through anaerobic digestion (AD) linked to
combined heat and power plant or through use as a direct fuel; and
- complementing alternate weekly collections of refuse by collecting the
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5. Wider Context – The Jigsaw
+ Reduction makes sense
- Priority activity to save money & resources
+ Love Food Hate Waste Campaigns
+ Community Composting initiatives
- The Big Society
+ Renewable Energy Agendas
- AD feedstock
+ Agricultural Agendas
- Fertilisers
- Digestates
- Soil structures
+ But need good collection systems!
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6. Don’t forget prevention!
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7. Composition counts!
+ Links back to WHY food waste ….
+ Data is key for any decisions on future
direction
- Strategy / service design
+ How much food waste do you have?
+ Does it warrant separate collection or
‘lose it’ with your garden wastes?
- Impacts on costs
+ NLWA waste composition
- Food waste = 28.5% in the waste stream!!
- Made it a priority to collect and treat
separately ….
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8. Collection Options
+ Universal Service?
- All HHs get the same?
+ Kerbside
+ Bring banks
+ Bins?
+ Vehicles?
+ Manpower
+ And what about commercial properties?
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9. Options for collecting food waste
• Collect food separately with bespoke vehicle
• Collect food separately but at the same time as other
wastes with a split bodied vehicle or a compartmentalised
vehicle
• Collect food and garden waste together in a single vehicle
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10. Combined systems
+ WRAP identified;
- Lower capture of food waste
- High captures of garden waste
- Residents disposing of food waste in the residual bin in the intervening
week?
- Less willing to put food in the garden bin?
- Suitability of feedstock for treatment option
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11. Bins & Caddies
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12. Bulking Food Waste
+ Why do it?
- Distance to treatment facility (>20km)
- Time to travel (> 40 mins)
- Transport costs (fuels)
- Environmental impacts of additional
vehicle movements
- Joint Working (shared facilities)
uncertainty
- Interim facility in use for short term
- Food waste trial under evaluation
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13. Thinking Holistically
+ The whole supply chain ….
Collections Bulking Treatment
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14. Considerations
+ Collection Vehicle Type
- Tipping operation will dictate bulking
- Stillage, pod, rear-end loader
+ Transfer Site space & cover
- Skips / vehicles/ tipping
+ Source segregated or Co-mingled
- Composition & Volume
+ ABPR compliance!
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15. Options Assessment
+ What options are you considering?
+ What criteria to use?
+ What weightings are important?
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16. Collection Options: Hackney
 Population 216,000
 Dwellings 101,189
 51% estate based households
 62% of street level properties
are flats
 Highly transient population
 All 19 wards are in the most
deprived nationally
 52% BAME population
 Changing demographic and
housing stock
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17. Collection Options: Hackney
Kerbside Estates
• 7 & 21 litre caddies • 10 litre vented caddy
• Weekly kerbside • Communal food waste bin
collections • Twice weekly collection
• 51,000 properties • 12,500 properties
(potentially)
• Expanded to 8,500 Jan 2012
• Sent to IVC
• Liners provided
• Sent to IVC
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18. Liners …
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19. The Liner Debate
+ On-going WRAP study headlines …
+ Residents like liners and they can increase participation BUT
- They can be expensive
- They need to be distributed regularly (direct or via a local
network)
- May not be favoured by your treatment facility (contaminants)
+ If you consider using liners
- Make sure you get a good deal (2.5p per liner or less!)
- Try and buy in bulk for better value
- Limit the thickness (thicker liners cost more but may not be
required)
- If you sell liners make sure you cover your whole costs….
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20. CBA for Liners in Hackney
+ Hackney kerbside liner trial
- participation up by 7.5%
- but would cost £121k per year
+ Estates – liner costs?
- £30k per annum!
- So not used!!!!!
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21. Roll Out
+ Big Bang Approach!
- Blanket deliveries
- Everyone changes at once
- Increased people @ call centre
- Home advisors on the streets
- Cheaper if it works (less people and less time involved)
+ Staged?
- Test the idea
- See how communications / media approaches work
- Learn lessons and update materials / messages
- Smaller team (employed for longer)
- Deal with confusion from areas ….
o on or off?
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22. Roll Out in Hackney (1)
Kerbside Estates
• Big Bang Approach • 2 phased roll outs
• Blanket deliveries • Door stepping delivery (2007)
• Blanket delivery (2010)
9/17/2012 22

23. Roll Out in Hackney (2)
• 10 liner roll starter pack given to all HHs
• Initially a retail network for selling the liners
• Only 1 type allowed @ NLWA
• Shops were happy to be involved
• Some sold them above the advertised price
• London Waste have now relaxed this stipulation
• residents can use any liner with the compostable logo on!
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24. Communications 1
+ Literature
+ Displays
+ Help line
+ Website
+ Home advisors
+ Doorsteppers
+ Language issues
+ Graphics
+ Distribution methods
+ Roadshows
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25. Communications 2
Set Up Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Brand Raising
Setting the scene
awareness Guidance
Content Telling residents
that the new How to use the
Copy what’s arriving
scheme is on service
Design and when
its way
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26. 26

27. Campaigning
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28. Addressing mis-conceptions
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29. 29

30. Communications in Hackney
Kerbside Estates
9/17/2012 30

31. Contamination
+ What can your processing facility cope with?
+ Liners or plastic bags?
+ Bones?
+ Food Packaging?
+ Stuff …..
+ How do you deal with it?
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32. Quality Feedstock ?
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33. Enforcement
+ Do you?
+ Would your political leaders support this?
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34. How do Residents React?
+ One offs?
+ Feedback to HH’s?
+ Repeat Offenders?
+ Harder line tactics?
+ Messaging …..
+ Critical!
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35. Monitoring 1
+ Data
- What do you need?
- How do you get it?
+ Participation rates?
- Need a monitoring protocol
+ Capture Rates?
- Service effectiveness…
+ Use data to target campaigns or service design / delivery
+ Validating data
- with other LA’s?
- with WRAP
http://www.wrap.org.uk/local_authorities/research_guidance/food_waste/sepa
rate_food_waste.html
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36. Monitoring 2
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37. Data is important ….
+ Participation rates
+ Capture rates
+ Tonnages collected
+ Contamination
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38. Hackney’s data
+ Participation rate
- Estates = 14%
- Kerbside =25%
+ Capture rate
- Estates = 10%
- Kerbside = 12.5%
+ Tonnages collected
- Estates = 0.33 kg / hhld / wk (average across all households served)
- Kerbside = 0.48 kg / hhld / wk (average across all households served)
+ Contamination levels
- No loads rejected in the last 6 months
- Estates: crew monitor contamination on a ‘site basis’ and report back
where problems exist; reinforced by waste team comms
- Kerbside: crew use contamination cards 38

39. Settling Down Period
+ Some residents will decrease their food waste arisings
- Visual impact of ‘wastage’
- New users come on line
- Old users stop
+ Be careful about the design of your system
- Too much / Too little capacity
+ Monitor and inform decisions
- Constant evolution …..
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40. Reinforcing the message - businesses
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41. Commercial Food Wastes
+ Is this the next BIG step?
+ Good News Stories exist
- The Savoy introduced food waste collection and it paid for itself in
terms of avoided disposal costs!
+ But still not considered a ‘core opportunity’
- Price can be too high for SME’s (usually pay by volume not weight)
+ Need to look at joint collection points?
- SME joint collection trials (WRAP funded)
+ Business Improvement District joint procurement
- Buying power of a number of business
- Service tailored to their needs – sharing of bins etc.
+ The future might be co-collection with MSW….
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42. Commercial Food Waste Collections
+ You need to consider:
- What to collect ?
- When to collect ?
- Collection methods / options ?
- Operating costs ?
- Charging methodology ?
- Opportunity to sell liners and periodic cleaning of bins ?
+ Could C&I food waste collections be aligned with domestic
collections?
+ Absolutely… it is a valuable raw material!!
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43. Commercial Food Waste Collections
+ You need to consider:
- What to collect ?
- When to collect ?
- Collection methods / options ?
- Operating costs ?
- Charging methodology ?
- Opportunity to sell liners and periodic cleaning of bins ?
+ Could C&I food waste collections be aligned with domestic
collections?
+ Absolutely… it is a valuable raw material!!
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44. Costs
+ It is not possible to give a specific cost per tonne or cost per
household figure for food waste collections as it will be different in
each Authority. It will be affected by:
- number of loaders;
- local wage levels;
- if existing vehicles are utilised e.g. adding to an existing kerbside service or new
vehicles are leased or purchased;
- requirement for any vehicle modifications;
- vehicle running costs and fuel;
- containers provided to residents (dependant on size and quality);
- type and number of liners provided to residents;
- round efficiencies in terms of size, set out rates, pass rates and crew
productivity;
- level of capture or diversion achieved;
- communications approach adopted; and monitoring requirements.
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- http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/food_waste_collection_guidance_-_amended_Mar_2010.pdf

45. Costs (Kerbside Analysis Tool Chart)
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46. Food waste collection scheme (Costs)
http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/food_waste_collection_guidance_-_amended_Mar_2010.pdf
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47. In Summary
+ The thought process for a successful food waste scheme….
- Compositional analysis
- Collection options
- Cost Benefit Analysis
- Roll-Out
- Communications
- Contamination
- Monitoring
- Data usage
- Settling down
- Learning lessons (your and others) …
- Co-collecting with C&I food wastes ….
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49. Good Morning!
Find out more visit our stand (20-L69)
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