The number of facilities reporting their figures under the Materials Facilities (MF) Regulations sampling requirements has reduced slightly from a low baseline figure, while validation queries raised by regulators has also reduced, new figures show.

Data released by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) today (18 February), which covers the period from July to September (Q3) 2015, marks a full year of the new sampling obligations, which were introduced in 2014 in an attempt to increase recyclate quality from material recovery facilities (MRFs).

The number of facilities that have notified and reported their inputs and outputs has increased from nine to 11 in Wales, but has decreased from 90 to 86 in England. Under the regulations, MRFs that qualify for the reporting obligations are those that receive 1,000 tonnes or more of mixed waste material for sorting in four consecutive reporting periods.

Results from the first few reporting periods drew suggestions that many eligible facilities were not reporting their waste, and the WRAP commentary into the Q3 results admits that ‘the number of notified sites in England is significantly lower than originally anticipated’.

The commentary states that the Environment Agency (EA) contacted 120 sites in England that had been identified as potentially falling within the scope of the regulations but had not reported figures. The ‘majority’ of responses that these inquiries received, says WRAP, suggested that the facilities did not reach the material threshold.

It was noted, however, that as facilities register themselves with their regulator, WRAP anticipates that facilities such as new builds will sign up in the future, and that the number of facilities taking part will increase.

Queries

A validation process is carried out on each return by its respective regulator (the EA in England and Natural Resources Wales in Wales), and in Q3 queries were raised on 60 of the returns for England and 10 for Wales.

This English figure represents a 23 per cent decrease on the previous quarter, and a 30 per cent decrease from the first quarter of 2015, when 86 queries were submitted. WRAP calls this trend ‘encouraging’, stating that it shows that more facilities are submitting valid data returns.

Among the most commons causes for regulator queries on data are:

• the number of samples recorded and/or sample weight being lower than required;
• percentages of individual target material not adding up to the total percentage for target material;
• inconsistent formatting on data returns; and
• data reported where not expected or missing data.

In order to ensure that reporting is being carried out correctly, the regulators also carry out both announced and unannounced visits to sites, which WRAP says enables them to advise operators on the statutory sampling and reporting requirements and assess their compliance with them.

WRAP warns that guidance given by these visits and in response to queries may not feature in the reporting data until the following quarter, and so may take up to six months to be recognised in the figures.

Not much variation in data

The information actually included in the Q3 data varies very little from the previous quarter’s data, published in November. In fact, the percentage of target input material has varied by 0.7 percentage points across the four reporting quarters in England, while in Wales the last three quarters have varied by 0.8 percentage points, with the first quarter (Q4 2014) being slightly higher, though the smaller data set in Wales means discrepancies will have a greater impact on the average.

Data in England was reported by 84 MRFs, waste from which can be directly attributed to 209 local authorities and 276 other suppliers, including waste management companies or other waste facilities. The total tonnage entering the MRFS in Q3 was 817,851 tonnes, just 72 tonnes less than Q2.

For composition analysis, the English MRFs provided 8,160 samples, the largest number of any of the four quarters so far, which showed that the average percentage of target material received (by weight) was 86.1 per cent, down slightly from 86.5 per cent in Q2. As with previous quarters, paper made up the bulk of this target material (50.9 per cent).

In Wales, the total tonnage reported was 74,995 tonnes, the highest tonnage of the four quarters. Of the sampled waste, 88.0 per cent consisted of target material on average, 53.5 per cent of which was paper.

In terms of outputs from the facilities, 606,674 tonnes of specified output material (SOM) left the responding English MRFs, an increase of 10,857 tonnes from Q3. The average percentage of target material in the outputs of responding MRFs was 91.1 per cent or higher for all of the four main SOM (paper, plastic, metal and glass). In Wales the output tonnage totalled 51,813 tonnes, with an average target material percentage of 89.7 per cent.

As with previous quarters, WRAP warns that as the sampling requirements are still new to MRF operators, only general observations should be taken from the data.

A full commentary to the MRF reporting data can be found on the WRAP website.