The use of landfill in the UK has been dramatically reduced by as much as 90% of local authority waste in England to landfill since 2000 according to government figures.
The transition away from this traditional means of disposal has seen many alternative approaches developed, including recycling and energy recovery but beginning with prevention. However, an overview of waste management in the UK as it stands shows that despite progress in the construction sector in particular, there is still progress to be made across the board.
Waste operators can help prevent food waste at source
It might seem counterintuitive for a waste management company to champion waste prevention, but Biffa has found that there are commercial and environmental opportunities in doing so.
The commercial arm of Biffa, for instance, operates a network of company shops that sell discounted surplus groceries from more than 800 brands, retailers and manufacturers to our members, who meet specific criteria. Members may work in the NHS, fire service, armed forces or charities for example. A percentage of the profit is re-invested in Community Shop, our social enterprise and the UK's first social supermarket, tackling the root causes of food insecurity in communities experiencing social inequality.
Community Shop provides heavily discounted food as well as other household essentials, and life-changing personal development programmes. We at Biffa support the industry in managing surplus at every stage of the product life cycle, investing in problem-solving capabilities to help reduce waste and recoup value for businesses.
Of course, not all food waste is preventable. That's why Biffa also operates 11 anaerobic digestion facilities that convert such waste into biogas for energy and nutrient-rich digestate for agricultural use. We also run in-vessel composting facilities to turn food and green waste into high-quality compost. In-vessel composting involves composting in a sealed container, such as a drum or concrete bunker. The process relies on naturally occurring microorganisms that require oxygen (aerobic digestion) to break down the organic matter.
Further along the supply chain, our consulting teams work with clients to audit their waste for prevention opportunities and advise on design packaging that either uses less material or is reusable or highly recyclable.
AI may improve recycling
Where waste cannot be prevented, recycling is the next best measure. Yet UK household recycling rates have plateaued for more than a decade, and plastics recycling has not scaled up to a point that it can compete with the price of virgin material.
Technological innovation may soon help change that. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve the accuracy and speed of waste sorting and enable the recovery of materials such as plastic films that are currently hard to recycle.
AI also has potential to improve purity in segregated waste streams, supporting closed-loop recycling of food-grade packaging and the development of chemical recycling technologies.
Sometimes, simple design changes can make a significant difference. The dairy industry, for example, has shifted from coloured milk bottle caps to colourless ones made from the same high-density polyethylene (HDPE) as the bottles.
This reduces contamination in the recycling stream, enabling bottles and caps to be processed together into food-grade HDPE pellets at Biffa's Redcar facility and go back into production of new bottles. Indeed, around 80% of HDPE milk bottles now sold in the UK contain 30% recycled content.
Incineration remains necessary for residual waste
While our priority is always to prioritise prevention and recycling, the reality is that the UK still generates millions of tonnes of residual waste each year. For now, incineration using energy recovery facilities (ERFs) remains a more effective and sanitary disposal method than landfill.
Each year, around 15m tonnes of residual waste is incinerated, generating about 3% of the UK's electricity. Even here, we look for opportunities to recycle. Around 3m tonnes of incinerator bottom ash is produced annually. Metals are extracted from this for recycling, and the remainder – which may contain glass, ceramics, bricks and concrete – is used in construction applications, such as road aggregates and concrete blocks.
Another area where residual waste can help to decarbonise the construction sector is in replacing fossil fuels in cement kilns after it has been processed into solid recovered fuel (SRF).
Biffa was a partner in the Protos Energy Recovery Facility in Cheshire, for instance, the first in the UK to be fitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS), which is essential to decarbonising the waste sector. However, our ultimate objective as a company is that only materials that it is impossible to repair, reuse or recycle are incinerated as in energy from waste (EfW) or processed into SRFs.
Challenges in electrifying refuse collection vehicles
Regardless of whether waste is composted, recycled or incinerated it must first be collected. With more than 3,000 vehicles in our fleet, decarbonising our logistics operations is another major sustainability challenge.
AI can help us optimise routes and reduce mileage, but we must also transition away from fossil-fuelled vehicles. While electric vans are entering our fleet, the switch is more complex for heavy-duty refuse collection vehicles (RCVs), and their rollout has been more limited.
RCVs consume as much energy compacting and lifting waste as they do while being driven, and many will be used for two or three shifts in one day. Currently, battery capacity is not yet adequate for a full fleet transition, but we aim to improve the percentage of the fleet that is alternatively fuelled. To accelerate adoption, we need government support in two key areas:
- enhanced public infrastructure for rapid charging of heavy commercial vehicles, with current facilities primarily designed for cars and small vans
- spreading the financial burden of local grid upgrades. If you want to electrify your fleet the local grid will need an upgrade, unless this has already been done. But the cost currently falls solely on the business that makes the first move, and competitors benefit while paying nothing.
In the interim, we are adopting lower-carbon fuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil. This has its own challenges, however, including higher costs and concerns about supply chain transparency, with the need for assurance that the fuel is derived from waste rather than virgin palm oil.
Construction waste now has higher recovery rates
As we move to a zero-waste economy, lessons can be learned from the construction sector, which according to statistics from the Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is showing a 93% rate of recovery for waste.
This is in large part because a huge effort has been made to collect waste aggregate for recycling and reuse. The Mineral Products Association says that 'In 2021, total recycled and secondary sources of aggregates are estimated to have accounted for 28% (69.6m tonnes) of total aggregates supply in Great Britain'.
Long-term policy signals about the aggregate tax and landfill tax gave the confidence needed for the development of infrastructure to crush, wash and grade aggregates, clean up soils and process plasterboard to recover the gypsum for agricultural use, to improve soil structure.
However, the challenge is to ensure there is sufficient demand for all the recycled materials. The construction and waste management sectors need to ensure the right incentives are in place so that development uses recycled materials where appropriate.
The waste management industry needs to work with the construction sector to raise awareness that recycled aggregates from reputable sources meet stringent standards and can be substituted for primary aggregates.
There is also still much that the construction sector can do to tackle non-aggregate waste, which is estimated by Biffa to cost the top four housebuilders up to £80m a year to dispose of.
The good news is that when we surveyed construction businesses last year, 90% agreed that waste management and recycling was an important metric for them in becoming more sustainable. Nearly all the corporations and SMEs we surveyed either had a sustainability plan or had one in the pipeline. Therefore, we think there is a great opportunity to work with the sector to design waste out of their processes.
'The construction and waste management sectors need to ensure the right incentives are in place so that development uses recycled materials where appropriate'
Compliance with new recycling policy will avoid costs
The government's simpler recycling policy, which came into effect in April for businesses with more than ten full-time employees, mandates the segregation of workplace waste into food waste, recyclables and general waste.
So far as construction is concerned the policy will, by April 2027, include the collection of plastic films, commonly used in the industry for a range of purposes from packaging to temporary coverings on sites for safety and weatherproofing.
Simpler recycling is an opportunity to standardise waste practices across every site, while better segregation often improves compliance with regulations on hazardous waste. Your waste provider can help you comply and optimise costs by recycling wherever possible, which is usually cheaper than general waste.
The UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is expected to be extended to ERFs by 2028, creating financial incentives to reduce fossil-based waste. Under the ETS, operators of such facilities will have to buy carbon allowances for the waste they do incinerate. This cost will be passed to waste producers in disposal costs.
Allowances currently cost around £40 per tonne, but in 2023 they traded at more than £100 and we predict they could be around £100 per tonne by 2028. Ensuring compliance with the simpler recycling policy and working with your waste service supplier to recover all eligible waste streams will be the best defence against these cost increases.
The government is also to introduce phased mandated digital waste tracking from next year, which will eventually bring greater data transparency in waste collection, recovery and disposal.
Digitising information about the flow of waste should also help combat waste crime through greater transparency for regulators. DEFRA estimates that 18% of waste is handled illegally, some of this proportion coming from the construction sector. Illegally handled waste is frequently fly-tipped or dumped in poorly managed landfills, so vigilance against rogue operators is crucial.
Environment secretary Steve Reed has declared that a road map to zero waste is one of his top five priorities for DEFRA. The government's newly established Circular Economy Taskforce will initially focus on six sectors:
- construction
- textiles
- transport
- agri-food
- electrical products
- chemicals and plastics.
The taskforce has an opportunity to address systemic barriers to reuse, recycling and circular design in the construction sector. One early focus may be reclassifying remediated soil: as the recent Corry review of DEFRA regulation emphasised, unnecessarily classifying treated soil as waste heavily restricts opportunities to reuse it.
With soil accounting for 53m tonnes of the UK's waste annually, this issue must be dealt with. Indeed, as landfill sites reach the end of their operational life and are closed, many are being restored using soil recovered from the construction sector.
Circular economy supports UK decarbonisation and resilience
The current model of consumption, where resources are taken, used and thrown away, is environmentally and economically unsustainable. If the UK is to stay on track for net zero by 2050, the Climate Change Committee has called for a 5% reduction in non-food waste by 2040 and a 68% recycling rate for all waste by 2035.
In addition, global disruptions – from COVID-19 to geopolitical conflict – have shown the risks of relying on imports for 80% of our raw materials. Many of these resources are essential to clean technology, healthcare and modern infrastructure, so a circular economy can support the development of resilient domestic supply chains that reduce our exposure to global shocks.
Circularity is only achievable through collaboration. Every part of the supply chain must be engaged – from designing reusable, repairable products to making responsible procurement choices and managing resources and waste effectively.