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AT YOUR DISPOSAL

31st May 2007, Page 50
31st May 2007
Page 50
Page 50, 31st May 2007 — AT YOUR DISPOSAL
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

The best way to save money on waste disposal and recycling is to use resources prudently in the first place. Roanna Avison investigates how businesses can make waste work for them.

It's pretty safe to say all businesses produce waste in some form: solid, whether for recycling or disposal; emissions; and liquids. Arranging for disposal can be pricey, but there are hidden costs too, such as the loss of reusable raw materials and the time and energy invested in processing fresh raw materials. And these hidden costs can be reduced.

According to Waste Watch, a charity dedicated to the reduction, reuse and recycling of household waste, UK businesses lose up to 4.5% of their annual turnover every year in unnecessary waste.

When waste is thrown away natural resources are lost, as well as the energy and time which went into making the product. Creating refuse puts pressure on the environment's ability to cope, not only with the landfill, but also with the impact of extracting fresh resources, and manufacturing and distributing the resulting goods.

The best way of managing waste is not to produce it in the first place. Having maximised waste prevention, operators should minimise the amount of refuse they produce, and there may be ways to reuse material.

Green incentive As an added incentive the EU Landfill Directive says that by 2010 the UK must reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste going to landfill to 75% of the 1995 level.That figure drops to 50% by 2013 and to 35% by 2020.

In 2005/6 the regs allowed for 15.2 million tonnes of landfill waste in England; the actual total was 12.4 million tonnes. Each county has a limit which it can 'trade' with other counties, and it's a popular scheme: in 2005/6 there were 339.792 trades involving 31 local authorities. There are plenty of government figures on recycling domestic waste, but the numbers for business waste are less comprehensive.The most recent figures. from 2002, shows only the volume produced, rather than how much has been recycled. So we know that the transport, storage and communications sectors generated 216,000 tonnes of waste oil, solvent paints and varnishes; 9,000 tonnes of 'industrial sludge'; and 20.000 tonnes of other chemical waste. Discarded equipment accounted for 154,000 tonnes, with 93,000 tonnes of metallic waste.

Action

Nick Blake, truck marketing and sales engineering manager at Mercedes-Benz, says the manufacturer already recycles huge amounts of steel:"In the manufacturing process there are lots of steel filings left over. We send these to the foundry to be incorporated into the next batch of steel sheets."

He adds that tyres are a huge issue for the industry: "We all need them, but we can at least get a lot of use out of them.With truck tyres, they have their first life and then you can regroove them.You can then get them remoulded and probably regroove them again. So that's four lives.

-This shows what the haulage industry can do for itself, without incentives, to make things more efficient and it has an environmental benefit."The story doesn't end there. Charles Lawrence International, based in Newark, Notts, reprocesses 4,000 tonnes of tyres into granules every year; they are used in playground and sports surfaces.

And Derek Skinner, technical director at Schmitz Cargobull, says there's increasing demand for trailers that are easy to recycle. "We now guarantee that our trailers are 99% recyclable at the end of life," he explains. in

Tags

Organisations: European Union
People: Derek Skinner
Locations: Newark

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