February 3, 2010 16:15 by
dereks
Surrey County Council (SCC) announced in December that there are no longer plans to build Energy from Waste incinerators in Surrey. Instead they are planning an Eco Park in Shepperton that will have an anaerobic digester (AD) to handle all Surrey’s domestic food waste. SCC is already working with the District and Borough Councils on separate food collections which should be operating throughout the county by the time the digester is ready.
This is good news of course, but is it the best option? The Green Mole Forum has set up a group to study this and we have met the SCC manager responsible for developing these plans. We learnt that SCC has only studied a single site to handle all of Surrey’s domestic food waste, but agreed there are viable alternatives that they have not studied properly. Importantly they haven’t considered having a number of local AD plants instead of one big plant, nor have they considered commercial food waste or farm waste as a possible feedstock for the plants. Smaller plants have a number of advantages including:
Less visually intrusive so more likely to get planning permission.
Shorter distances to the plant so fewer lorry-miles to transport the waste.
Communities deal with their own waste.
We have recently taken a big step forward by commissioning a student at Surrey University's Centre for Environment Strategy (CES) to carry out a thorough study of large versus local AD plants. Using Life Cycle Analysis, a study technique for which CES has an international reputation, it'll work out the best environmental option and will be her MSc project.
An important early part of the work will be collecting data from Mole Valley’s cafes, pubs, sandwich shops, school canteens, etc. to estimate how much commercial food waste is produced. SCC estimate that it could be about the same quantity as the total domestic food waste.
Once again, the Woodland Trust are offering recycling facilities for your Christmas cards throughout January. There is a poster on the Epsom Tower noticeboard giving more details - cards can either be taken to WH Smith, Marks & Spencer or TKMaxx - or you can just leave them in the box in the Tower. The scheme ends on 31 January.
This is a great way of recycling your cards. Over the 12 years that the scheme has been running, 600m cards have been recycled. This has had two readily measurable benefits: firstly, 141,000 new trees have been planted, and secondly, 12,000 tonnes of paper and card have not been landfilled, thus saving 16,000 tonnes of harmful carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.
The Woodland Trust's website (www.woodlandtrust.org.uk) also has an important reminder about reducing and reusing things before we worry about recycling - these early steps in the waste process are even more effective ways of cutting down on landfill and reducing our carbon footprints. For reducing they suggest simply refusing plastic carrier bags wherever possible - something I'm sure that many of us do automatically now. For reusing we can support organisations such as Green Metropolis (an online second hand bookshop - www.greenmetropolis.com), but charity shops and high street second hand bookshops are non-online ways of doing the same thing. An "inhouse" way to reuse birthday cards is to either make "eco-cards" yourself, or pass them on to the Tots Alive! children who like cutting them up and sticking them - just leave any cards in the box in the Tower.
Another way to reduce, reuse and recycle is to learn how to knit or crochet, remodel your own clothes, or even just mend them by stitching on buttons and making repairs. If this appeals, Dorking Stitch Up could be the new group for you. They meet on the second Saturday morning each month in the Christian Centre in Dorking, see www.transitiondorking.org for more details.
Compost Works will be giving away FREE jumbo bags, to make your own leaf mould, this Saturday (October 31st) in St Martin's Walk, Dorking and next Saturday (November 7th) in Leatherhead High Street.
No work is involved, you just fill the bags with leaves, leave them for 18 months or so and the result is a friable, low-nutrient compost. This is ideal as a mulch, to make seed compost or to incorporate in soil to improve the texture.
For more information on this, or composting in general, and to find other places where you can get the bags, check out their recently updated website.
October 21, 2009 15:51 by
dereksGreen Mole Forum has decided to form a group to look at the possibilities for installing anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in Mole Valley.
AD is a well established process for handing sewage, farm wastes, food wastes or combinations of these feedstocks to produce biogas and a solid residue that is a valuable soil fertiliser. AD keeps organic waste out of landfill, and cuts greenhouse gas emissions. AD plants vary from the very large (one AD plant handles all Stockholm’s sewage and food wastes for example) to plants the size of a large table. There are still not many AD plants in the UK, despite government support for them. The introduction of feed-in tariffs will give a big boost to all renewable energy technologies in the UK including AD.
A small AD plant is already being seriously considered in Headley to run on a mixture of horse manure and sewage. Local famers recognise the benefits of having an AD plant on farm land. Our new group intends to build on this existing local support, gather information, seek advice from experts, and come up with the most promising AD projects. If you would like to be part of this group or find out more, please send us an email using the ‘Contact us’ button on the website, or give me a ring on 01372-378914.
Derek Smith
Headley Village Shop
If you want to buy Ecover products in bulk (ie you bring your own containers) the Headley Village Shop sells the following products:-
- Laundry Liquid
- Hand soap
- Multi-surface cleaner
- Fabric Softener
- Washing up liquid
- And something else but I’ve lost my crib sheet!!
The shop also sells a range of organic and local produce.
This year's British Science Festival is focused around Guildford.
There are events from the 5th to 10th September including a large number of interest to visitors to this blog. For the full list click here.
Here are some excerpts:
In a letter from Mole Valley District Council, dated 19th June 2009, it was announced that the food waste collection service will be resuming this week. This follows it's withdrawal earlier in the year when the trial's funding came to an end.
Due, in no small part I'm sure, to public outcry, new funding has been found and the council are now examining 'how food waste collections can be implemented across the rest of the district'.
If this happens let's hope it spurs Surrey County Council into building its digester, as currently food waste is processed in Dorset (the nearest licenced plant in the UK) and green waste is composted in Reading! See the article on the GMF's visit to Leatherhead's Materials Recovery Facility.
Richard Molyneux
You may have read on this site before about DEFRA's proposals to introduce a charge to register to be exempt from certain forthcoming composting regulations (?!)
Well, DEFRA have had so many responses to this and to other proposals that they've had to postpone their conclusions from October 2009 to April 2010. Almost all are against the proposal. Well done everyone who wrote in, and thanks.
(The comment deadline was Thursday 23 October 2008. Comments were to be sent exemptions@defra.gsi.gov.uk. Perhaps they will still accept comments becuase of their extension, who knows...)
They have published a summary of responses (here).
Here are some excepts of the excepts:
3.6 Proposal 6 – To introduce a charge for the registration of all registerable exemptions
- 'Unlike most other proposals, the vast majority of respondents to proposal six did not agree with the proposal'
- 'Many suggested that the introduction of a fee for registration would be to the detriment of the environment as many of the activities currently in operation which work to the benefit of the environment (e.g. community composting activities) would be forced to stop, or would not start in the first place.'
- 'LARAC is concerned about the effect of the introduction of charges on charitable organisations and community organisations, including community composting projects'
- 'The overwhelming response from these groups [Individuals and the Community and Third Sector] was to reject proposal six. Almost unanimous opposition for the proposal was received, with only two respondents supporting the proposal'
- 'Respondents highlighted the disparity in Government policy, whereby on one hand, they are being encouraged to recycle, and on the other hand, with this proposal, the Government wishes to impose new charges on the activities which they seek to promote. One respondent stated: “I have recently heard of the proposal to charge schools and charities an exemption fee of £50 if they wish to have a compost heap. I understand the need to control the collection and disposal of waste and can accept that industrial scale composting operations require control. However, to charge schools for the privilege of educating children in caring for the environment seems ludicrous and, I am sure, contrary to information from other sections of government.”'
- 'We cannot express strongly enough the impact that the introduction of a charge for charities and not-for-profit organisations will have, however even further the impact this would have on the number of schools composting. There are various Government supported projects that are encouraging schools to grow their own and make children see the connection between what they grow and what they eat, and compost is an essential ingredient to help the growing process. Yet DEFRA‟s suggestion of charging a £50 registration fee would be a disincentive to start or potentially continue composting. Schools often operate this type of activity on a seriously stretched budget, and if the charge was introduced, this would be a reason not to even start composting. As CCN have stated “introducing a charge for a no-risk to very low risk activity seems to go against the „polluter pays‟ principle, as there is no pollution or environmental risk to pay for.'
April 27, 2009 17:46 by
dereks
This article describes my immediate family’s experience of using three different food waste disposal products.
Green Cone
Starting with me, I’m just into my third year with a green cone. I bought this cheaply when MVDC was subsidising them. It is a quite large inverted plastic cone which you part bury in the garden. The buried part has holes in the sides to allow worms to enter from the surrounding soil. The supplier says it deals with all food waste, cooked and uncooked, even bones. I’ve never put bones in, but it certainly deals with all our other food waste (two adults). In the right conditions it should work all the year round and only need emptying every few years. Mine seems to stop in the winter and I have emptied it each spring, putting the contents in the bottom of my compost heap when it must provide several hundred additional worms to the heap. In summer it gets fruit flies but they are easily killed.
More information is at http://www.greencone.com/
Worm Works Wormery
My daughter bought a Worm Works Wormery last autumn. She kept in her garage for the winter but it was slow getting going. However in the past month it has really got going and she reckons the number of worms has tripled since she has had it. It takes fruit, veg, cooked and uncooked, shredded paper but not meat and dairy products. It is made from compartments which stack together. Her daughter loves it as you can easily take it apart and see how the worms are doing in each layer. Excess liquid drains and is collected at the bottom. It is clean and she is really pleased with it.
More information is at http://www.bucketofworms.co.uk/wormery.html
Wigglywigglers
Wigglywigglers make a range of wormeries. My younger son has a basic one which has just one compartment with a tap at the bottom to drain off liquid. He keeps it outside and the worms survived the cold winter just gone. He has had it for 15 months and it has taken most of his food waste (two adults) but it will need emptying soon. He has yet to discover what the product is like, but it ought to be high quality compost. Emptying will be rather messy, but it has done its job and I imagine was quite cheap.
More information is at http://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/
Derek Smith