Biffa Recycling and Recovery
Biffa want to build on our reputation for delivering sustainable solutions that help our customers meet their legislative and corporate responsibility requirements.
To do this we are placing recycling at the very heart of our business, along with a strong focus on providing excellent service to our commercial, industrial and municipal customers
Improved Waste Segregation Capabilities
Biffa currently operates 32 transfer stations across the UK in strategic locations to support the collection business and to improve recycling rates, most involve some form of mechanical or manual sorting. We have a number of sites being further developed this year with a new operation in Southampton and a 10 acre site opening in Leeds which will enhance our facilities in West Yorkshire.
Additionally, Biffa have developed a plan that will significantly increase our ability to recover recyclable material from our customers’ waste streams. During 2011 and 2012 we will be introducing additional “sort lines” in our Transfer Station facilities in South Shields, Wembley, Newstead (Stoke), Birmingham and St Helens.
This will enable Biffa to recover higher volumes of Recyclate from all waste tipped into these facilities ensuring that we can offer simpler recycling solutions to our customers whilst also reducing our own vehicle movements.
Biffa are also currently looking to acquire more land for Recycling operations and at potential acquisitions that will continue to grow our infrastructure.
The end destination for materials that are processed at our MRFs and transfer stations are described below.
Paper and Card
Biffa has a long-standing strategic relationship with SCA Recycling for the sale of all paper and card materials generated from its locations. SCA Recycling is part of the SCA group of companies and is the largest end-user of recovered paper in Europe, and one of the world’s largest forestry products companies.
Globally, SCA have interests in mills that require feedstock covering all of the major groups of recovered fibre. SCA Recycling has supply arrangements covering both mills within the SCA group, and into third party reprocessors. As such they are fully accredited and licensed for such exports.
Glass
Biffa have a national supply agreement with two suppliers for the sale of glass, both collected from our national commercial collection rounds, and for material generated via municipal contracts, be that from source separated collections of sorted from single/twin stream systems. Both of our suppliers are major deliverers into Ardagh, one of the largest glass producers in the UK. Material supplied from Biffa undergoes further sorting and grading, with the majority being supplied into the re-melt sector, and the remainder supplied into the aggregates industry. Approximately 45,000 tonnes per annum is currently supplied on this basis.
Metals (Ferrous and Non-Ferrous)
Biffa supply metals to a number of the UK’s largest re-processors, including EMR and Sims. EMR is a global leader in recycling. Their core business is the recycling of metal-rich waste streams arising from end of life vehicles/ consumer products, industry and construction/ demolition, resulting in sales of recycled commodities of around 10 million tonnes a year. They produce over 100 grades of recycled products.
In addition, we deal with AMG, who are heavily involved in the export market, and Recan, which is the recycling division of Ball Packaging. Ball are one of the world’s biggest producers of beverage cans, and through Recan they work to provide a closed loop solution for the recycling of used beverage cans.
Plastics
With the acquisition of Greenstar UK, Biffa has in house a premier plastics processing group. Greenstar WES is one of the UK's foremost recyclers of post-use rigid and flexible plastics. The Greenstar WES Group has been recycling plastic scrap since 1999; starting with an output of around 700 tonnes per annum the group now recycles in excess of 12,000 tonnes per year, with plans for further expansion of capacity. Greenstar pioneered development of the process which has allowed the plant to become highly proficient in the recycling of a wide range of rigid plastics, especially in polypropylene, polyethylene and polystyrene both industrial and post-use in origin.
The plant’s finished productsare re-compounded pellets of recycled raw materials which in many cases can substitute prime virgin materials or be used in a blend to reduce the use of virgin materials. Melt flow (MFI), Colour and impact strength are just a few of the parameters that we are able to modify. The company is the first in the world to achieve the recycling of HDPE food grade plastics. In April 2009 Greenstar WES received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category for its work in processing waste plastics into hygienic recycled material now found in millions of food trays and milk bottles across the UK.
Non-metallic bulky items
Non-metallic bulky items such as wood will be collected in skips and where possible be baled/bulked and delivered to specialist recycling reprocessors. The availability of recycling opportunities for some items is limited. Where possible wood will be delivered to Timberpak, a subsidiary of one of Europe’s largest wood based panel manufacturers, EGGER. They currently process approx. 5,000 tonnes of waste wood per month (60,000 p.a.) and are responsible for material acceptance, sorting, shredding, loading and dispatch. From the Timberpak depot the timber is transported to EGGER’s plant in Northumberland where it is cleaned and chipped prior to manufacturing into chipboard panels for the furniture, shopfitting and construction industries.
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
Both hazardous and non-hazardous WEEE items are generally taken initially to our Wednesbury hazardous waste site where they are sorted and delivered to specialist recycling processors where possible.
Residual waste which cannot be recycled will then be taken to a licensed landfill site. However, sustainability and economic factors make landfill increasingly less viable and Biffa as a leading waste management provider recycles as much waste as possible with a goal of Zero to Landfill.
Refuse Derived Fuels
Biffa have recently been developing a strategy for managing the residual waste left from large scale recycling operations such as our material recovery facilities. The process that is now becoming favourable within our business and for use by our clients is that of the production of RDF – Refuse Derived Fuel. This process will assist Biffa and our customers to remove more recyclates from general waste streams thus increasing recycling percentages and reducing the volume of waste going to landfill the benefit to our customers is that this strongly supports the Zero to Landfill objective.
Biffa’s ongoing project….
Biffa has from Oct 2010 been trialing the preparation of and export of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) from our facility in Leicester. We recognise this process as providing the best economic return for our client Leicester City Council and Biffa as the Waste Management Contractor. This processallows us to achieve 100% diversion from landfill by turning any residual waste left over from our recycling facilities into refuse derived fuel and this provides a significant carbon footprint benefit.
We are now in the process of launching this process at other Biffa sites across the country starting with our [waste transfer station] facility at Nottingham and the small residual waste stream from our clean Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) at Manchester and North London.
At our facility in Nottinghamthe aim is to recover as much material for recycling from any load delivered into the facility before considering the option of RDF. Therefore the fuel being created is only produced from materials that cannot be easily recovered or are too contaminated to be sold as recyclate materials. It is anticipated that this RDF production will be operation at these facilities by the end of the 2011.
We have identified further sites and through 2012 we will install the necessary plant and equipment to produce RDF. This project is a clear commitment to our investment in new technologies and is an ongoing project that will form a key part of our own future strategy which will in turn benefit our customers.