Farm and General Services Weblog

New Research commissioned by DEFRA last month has raised concerns, after the results showed that even though green waste being thrown into the rubbish bin has fallen, so to has the amount going into home composting and CA sites.

DEFRA’s report on household waste arising’s in 2007 showed that 46% of households use civic amenity sites, with garden waste continuing to be the largest category of waste deposited. It also found that since 2005, the proportion of garden waste has declined, mainly due to the increase in kerbside collections.

Overall it was found that kerbside collections are now responsible for 25% of all composted waste, with home composting responsible for 40.9% of composted waste. Out of all composted waste in 2007, garden waste represented 65.9%, compared to 32.1% of kitchen waste and 2% of paper waste.

A new guide has been published recently by WRAP that aims to provide farmers and growers with expert knowledge on the benefits of quality compost.

The booklet, entitled ‘Using Quality Compost to Benefit Crops’ provides comprehensive information about the numerous benefits of using and applying quality compost made from garden and food waste.

It also highlights the results of a variety of scientific trials on the use of compost, including one conducted on potatoes, wheat, barley and sugar beet on a number of vicinity’s across the country.

The results showed that compost increased crop yields and gave long-term improvements in soil structure.

Major vendors have been instructed to achieve a ’substantial reduction’ in the number of plastic carrier bags used, after reports showed that a meagre 7% reduction had been achieved in the first year of voluntary agreement.

WRAP has said that based on data provided by retailers, the total number used by the 21 retailers in the first year of the agreement dropped by one million bags from 13.4 billion to 12.4 billion. However, the government-funded body is extremely dissatisfied with these results and has demanded more action.

A survey commissioned by the Composting Association and WRAP has revealed that two million tonnes of new compost treatment capacity will become operational over the next five years.

The results for 2005/06 showed that 3.4 million tonnes of source segregated waste was composted. In total, 85% of the waste composted was municipal, with just under half coming from household kerbside collections.

Jeremy Jacobs, acting chief of The Composting Association, commented: "Although only a small proportion of biowastes composted were foods and animal by-products, survey respondents estimated that two million tonnes of new treatment capacity will become operational over the next five years."

One of the world’s leading animal health companies has confirmed this week that it will be possible to develop a vaccine for the serotype 8 variant of Bluetongue, identified in cattle and sheep over recent months in Northern Europe and Great Britain.

However, concerns are arising over costs, especially as it is still unknown if governments will pay the manufacturers up front or expect farmers to pay their veterinary suppliers directly.

Earlier this week DEFRA published new packaging waste recovery and recycling targets for 2008 - 2010, increasing the overall target to 72%.

In 2008 alone, these amended targets will prevent an estimated 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere, helping in the fight against climate change.

The new overall targets of 72% in 2008, 73% in 2009 and 74% in 2010 will ensure that we meet the 2008 EU Directive target of recycling 60% of our packaging waste.

The first study conducted by the European Environment Agency, into investigating the impact of Europe’s waste on climate change has unearthed promising figures, and their findings also show that better management of municipal waste could greatly reduce the release of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

The EEA has predicted that household waste volumes will increase by 25% between 2005 - 2020 and that this in itself provides a real challenge for the industry. However, they hold a strong belief that as recycling and incineration with energy recovery are increasingly used, net greenhouse gases from European municipal waste will decrease dramatically by more than 80% in 2020.

The Health & Safety Executive has published a new research report entitled: Collecting, Transfer, Treatment and Processing household waste recyclables.

Based on the increase of people working within the waste management and recycling industry, it is reasonable to assume that there will be greater exposure to Health & Safety related hazards. The HSE has identified that the provision of appropriate guidance, tools or Personal Protective Equipment could greatly reduce the associated risks and could overall enable local authorities to select the most appropriate systems to ensure environmental targets are met with the least possible threats.

Further details are available from the HSE Website.

Following a meeting of the European Commission in Brussels earlier today, the UK has been told it must radically increase the proportion of its energy coming from renewables in order to meet the new targets on carbon emissions.

Only 2% of the UK’s energy is renewable and in order to comply with this latest requirement Britain must get 15% or more of its energy for heat, electricity and transport from sources such as wind, wave, solar and biomass

In addition to this, it is imperative that Great Britain cuts its greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum of 16% and obtains 10% of road transport fuel from biofuels.

Despite local and national campaigns aimed at promoting recycling and the reuse of recyclable materials, the CPI has released figures that illustrate a decline in the use of recovered paper across the UK.

The federation reported that last year, the UK only produced just over 5.2 million tonnes of paper and board, a 6.4% reduction on the total recorded for 2006. With regards to raw material input, UK paper and board mills used just under 4.1 million tonnes of recovered paper, a decline of 3.0% against 2006 usage.

They were also keen to point out that the sudden decrease could be due to the closure of two paper mills in 2007, who between them represented around 250,000 tonnes of capacity.