Authorities are rolling out domestic kitchen waste collections left, right and centre, but this might leave businesses feeling neglected. Not so in Islington, where a commercial food waste collection trial has been expanded to a mainstream serviceIslington Council has transformed its recycling services to residents over the last five years, from 2004 when the recycling rate was below eight per cent to a recycling rate of over 30 per cent now. These days, most residents can recycle a wide range of recyclables, garden waste and food waste, as well as rubbish, all on the same day.
Over the coming year, food waste collections will be rolled out to 10,000 estate-based residents. School children, nurseries and even prisoners can already recycle food waste in Islington.
But what about businesses? There are some 8,000 businesses in the borough, most of them SMEs. It’s one of the most densely populated areas in the country so businesses and residents mix. We at Islington Council soon came to appreciate that businesses wanted what residents were already getting.
Islington has been providing support and advice to businesses since it pioneered the Tidy Business Standards scheme in 2005. Later, our contractor, Enterprise, began to introduce business recycling services for glass and paper, and at the same time we also worked with recycling companies from the community sector, such as The Laundry, to promote greater amounts of recycling among businesses. Encouraging businesses to waste less and recycle more was becoming a major political priority and is currently Islington’s only recycling related Local Area Agreement target – we’ve been tasked with increasing the number of businesses with a recycling contract from around 800 to around 1,400 over two years.
Then, in 2008, an opportunity came up to work with the London Development Agency (LDA) to develop a food waste recycling service to businesses through a £148,000 grant. Never a council to shy away from a challenge (or a grant!), we grabbed the opportunity with both hands. The result?
Sixty-five businesses, including the new Guardian News & Media headquarters, recycling their food waste with us and more than 166 tonnes of food waste diverted from landfill to date. This represents a carbon saving of more than 150,520 tonnes.The scheme is simple. We provide 25-litre food waste containers (similar to those used in many domestic schemes) for use in kitchens. Businesses can either place these out for emptying or transfer the contents to a larger 120-litre wheeled bin. Biobags are also provided, along with training, advice, guidance and encouragement.
LRS Consultancy was brought in for project management and communications support and the organisation’s door knockers were charged with persuading businesses to come on board. A number of key issues quickly emerged.
The economic uncertainty meant that many businesses didn’t want to consider any changes to their waste contracts that didn’t save them money. The subsidies created by the LDA funding helped to overcome this, enabling us to reduce collection costs down to around £2.55 to empty a 120-litre container.
Many restaurants had small kitchen spaces and felt they had no room to store food waste separately. Others
were concerned about having to place their food waste outside their businesses, especially if they
were restaurants.
Our communications officers helped to overcome these perception barriers. The restaurants’ food waste is already stored somewhere and is already placed outside their business along with the rest of their rubbish. Many businesses came on board when they began to view this as a normal part of sensible waste management, not something strange and inconvenient.
Some businesses welcomed the service with open arms, seeing it as an opportunity to enhance their corporate responsibility profiles, something they could effectively use as a selling point for their businesses. Parts of Islington are like that! However, many parts aren’t and there are many food outlets and retailers that simply aren’t interested in recycling. We have yet to find an effective way of overcoming this.
Collection costs have been a key issue. Working with our collection contractor, we have kept costs to a minimum. However, 26 per cent of the full service cost before subsidies (around £10 for a 120-litre wheeled bin collection) comes from disposal and this presents us with a problem.
In Islington, along with much of the rest of the country, business waste collections are charged by volume. Businesses get charged one price for a bag of rubbish, another for a Eurobin pickup and so on. Our waste disposal authority, the North London Waste Authority, recharges its constituent boroughs for business waste disposal via a levy system that is based on the number and volume of business waste contracts.
However, the food waste we collect is sent directly to an anaerobic digestion facility and we pay through a gate fee, based on tonnage.
Due to the high volume-to-weight ratio of food waste, any business diverting food waste to recycling is going to attract minimal savings on its current contract because of the small volume reduction, while incurring reasonably high extra disposal costs for the heavy food waste sent for recycling.
What’s the answer? Short of a wholesale introduction nationally of bin weighing and a switch to direct charging by weight, there isn’t one (any suggestions welcome!). Charging more for heavier waste leaves us open to cherry picking from competitors signing up businesses producing mostly lightweight waste. Charging the full disposal cost for food waste prices the service out of the reach of many businesses struggling to stay afloat.
Islington, along with Enterprise, recognises the importance of this service to businesses and continues to do everything possible to keep costs down.
Another key partner in making the scheme work has been the organics recycling business BiogenGreenfinch, which has utilised existing transport capacity to help keep haulage costs down. The company reports that contamination has been almost non-existent. This speaks volumes for the work of the communications officers and the effective way that they explained the service to business owners. However, credit is also due to the knowledge and understanding of business and restaurant owners who clearly know the difference between food waste and plastic packaging! Nevertheless, our collection crews always check for contamination before emptying anything into their lorries.
The service is now owned and operated by Enterprise as part of its suite of services to Islington businesses, but we continue to work with them to encourage more businesses to recycle and reduce waste.
Local authorities and waste companies will have to do their own sums to see if there is an opportunity to save valuable resources through providing similar services. Diverting food waste from landfill clearly has a LATS benefit, but improving your range of business waste services may result in attracting more residual waste through your contracts, increasing your overall liability.
Political considerations of course play a big role, as does the need to control business waste and the times and ways in which it is put out for collection. In urban areas, the quality of the street scene is of huge importance and irresponsible disposal of business waste can have a massive, negative impact.
My view is that recycling services are increasingly what small businesses want. They want to recycle, just like residents do, and unless a range of services is offered to meet the whole range of business needs, contracts will be lost to competitors that can provide these services. Flexibility is the order of the day. It is no longer enough to simply collect, and dispose of, rubbish.