The Gretaer London Authority (GLA) has published a guide - written by consultants Enviros - which aims to develop the opportunity that trade waste recycling presents through establishing best practice guidance, which is based on researched case studies and builds on the lessons learnt by authorities who are operating successful trade waste recycling schemes.

The guidance identifies the key considerations which need to be taken into account when implementing a trade waste recycling scheme and develops the considerations into a practical, action oriented plan.

Definition

For the purposes of this project, ‘‘trade waste‘‘ is defined as ‘‘the commercial element of municipal waste‘‘. This includes trade waste which is collected on behalf of local authorities by a private contractor or a collection authority.

Only eight London boroughs currently offer a trade waste recycling service to businesses in their borough, collecting single materials or combinations of paper, cans, glass and plastics.

The City of Westminster has a sophisticated trade waste collection and recycling scheme set up, offering a range of collection products and services. Several Boroughs promote their services by offering to collect some trade waste (paper and glass) for recycling at a reduced rate. Southwark offers a trade waste recycling scheme at reduced rate, collecting recyclables at 40% less than the cost of collections for normal waste. There are a number of other London boroughs looking into the possibility of introducing a trade waste recycling service. The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham keeps its prices under regular review and promotes its trade refuse collection service as widely as possible. However, because many of the large national chains / franchises (pubs, clubs, restaurants and fast food outlets in particular) in the borough have national waste collection agreements with private sector contractors, this often prevents them from providing a service to local branches. In a number of boroughs well known waste collection companies offer to collect trade and recycled trade waste thus competing with the local authorities.

Why recycle trade waste?

A key driver for the development of trade waste recycling is the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS) which sets challenging targets to reduce the tonnage of biodegradable municipal waste which is sent to landfill. Trade wastes count against an authority‘‘s LATS targets therefore the recycling or composting of the biodegradable element of trade waste, diverting it from landfill, presents an opportunity to both increase recycling and move towards meeting LATS targets.

Drivers in terms of policy include the Mayor‘‘s Municipal Waste Strategy. In particular, policy 2 identifies the target to recover value from 40% of municipal waste by 2005, 45% by 2010 and 67% by 2015.

Proposal 20 of the stratgey encourages waste authorities to fully explore opportunities for trade waste recycling collections. For those London boroughs that already collect trade wastes the diversion of biodegradable material from landfill by introducing recycling activities for trade wastes gives a positive benefit in terms of LATS compliance.

Collecting more trade wastes than previously and recycling a greater proportion of the biodegradable components gives a positive benefit. However, collecting more trade wastes but failing to increase the proportion which is diverted will count against LATS targets. Expanding or developing existing collection rounds and arrangements is likely to be the most cost-effective approach, possibly linking the collection of materials from bring banks to the collection of, for example, card from commercial premises.

The collection and recycling of trade wastes can be an income generator, where some of the costs of recycling can be cove