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Waste not, want not
30 Nov 2009
Topics: Waste management, PAS 402
The things we throw away in the UK today may resurface one day soon, if recent government statistics are to be believed. Landfill space is running out and managing waste isn't something we can afford to sweep under the rug in the long term. Ben Schiller investigates.
According to the Environment Agency, the UK's current landfill waste sites will reach capacity in about seven years. This statistic, however, belies the situation in particular areas of the country. In some parts of Wales, for example, landfill sites have as little as three years left to run before they will fill to bursting. That means that authorities must either build yet more capacity, setting aside land that could be used for other things, or try to change the existing practices of businesses and consumers.
Not surprisingly, some authorities are trying to do the latter. Wales, for example, has a programme to reduce landfill from the construction industry - the biggest single contributor to landfill sites. As part of this programme, Construction Excellence Wales (CEW), an umbrella group for the building industry, has introduced a new publicly available specification (PAS 402) on waste management, with backing from the Welsh Assembly.
PAS 402 was created to help waste management organizations demonstrate they are meeting a framework of best practice performance, thus diverting as much waste away from landfill as possible. In time, CEW and the Welsh government hope PAS 402 will significantly reduce overall landfill use by driving behaviour-changes across procurement, construction and the waste industry.
Don't skip any steps
Emma Cottrell, waste programme manager for CEW, says the project grew out of the problem that construction companies could not be sure that the skips they were taking to landfill were being dealt with adequately.
"When we started talking to construction companies, we found that a lot of them were relying on waste management organizations for the data on how well they were doing. When we interrogated the data, it was not holding up," she says.
While waste management firms could show what happened to waste in the aggregate, they were unable to corroborate data for individual firms. There was also no standardized way to record recovery figures (the amount diverted away from landfill), which would allow a third-party to make comparisons between firms' performance.
PAS 402 was launched in July 2009 following nine months of design and consultation involving a range of stakeholders. CEW also signed up 10 so-called "Pathfinder" companies as first-adopters for the new scheme - these have now become PAS 402 advocates in the Welsh industry.
The framework covers areas such as operational control, risk management, staff competence and performance review, producing both quantitative and qualitative data. The data produced by the companies is accredited by UKAS, the national accreditation service.
Cottrell points out that the motivation for the companies involved is that PAS 402 separates them from the crowd: "It enables these companies to demonstrate that they are diverting materials from landfill in an independently verified way."
Initially, the companies had the direct incentive of winning business as part of public procurement projects, which tend to have stricter environmental requirements than private sector ones. But, says Cottrell, companies are approaching CEW "because they think it's a good idea and without us having to push it with them".
Don't waste time
CEW approached BSI in May 2008. After scanning through existing standards, BSI assured Cottrell and her colleague Paul Jennings that their idea would be sufficiently unique to be taken forward.
BSI formed a steering group to develop the framework along with the Welsh Assembly, the Environment Agency, Swansea Metropolitan University and BRE Wales, as well as the 10 Pathfinder companies.
The consultation process, based on a draft of the specification, involved a further 90 stakeholders. BSI project manager Alex Kay says the aim was to ensure that the document was relevant and that there was consensus among the different interested parties about the way forward.
Although the project is still in its early days, the pilot companies have already published impressive results. Since September 2008, they have managed to divert between 46 and 83 per cent of material that would have ended up in landfill to other uses. One specialist company - Derwen, in Neath - reduced the amount of inert waste it was sending to landfill to zero. The Welsh Assembly Government's target is that 85 per cent of construction and demolition waste be re-used and recycled by 2010.
Cottrell says the act of reporting is likely to lead to progressive improvements over time: "They have put their performance out there, so they want to improve. It enables them to see areas of their business that are perhaps deficient, where they could make additional savings. We have a lot of companies that have made investments this year to bring up their recovery rates, so the numbers should be a lot better next year," she says.
It may be that PAS 402 will be used outside Wales as well. Jennings says BSI has already been in touch to see if CEW can help with a roll-out to parts of England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Kay says wide applicability was always built into the process, and partly explains the long list of stakeholders.
"These sorts of specifications can have quite wide usage, so we wanted to make sure that our strategy here fits with other regional strategies in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Representatives from those regions were included in the consultation as well."
More immediately, the next step is to get more Welsh companies to participate. Jennings says: "What is needed now is for the numbers to grow to a level where we can persuade devolved government and local authorities to actually specify it in their procurement process. If that happens, the companies operating to the PAS would certainly see a business benefit."
For more information on the waste management PAS visit:www.bsigroup.com/pas402
Business Standards © 2010. Editorial produced by Caspian Publishing in association with The British Standards Institution. Editorial opinions expressed on are not necessarily those of BSI Group or Caspian Publishing. Neither Caspian Publishing nor BSI Group accept responsibility for advertising or editorial content, nor for that appearing on linked third-party websites. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden without written permission from BSI Group or Caspian Publishing.
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