A renewable energy technology which could generate clean energy for homes, divert waste from landfill and produce nutrient-rich fertiliser for farmland has been given a boost by the Environment Agency and WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme). Businesses and the agricultural community using anaerobic digestion (AD) – the process whereby bacteria breaks down organic material in the absence of air - will benefit from relaxed waste regulations if they conform to a new Quality Protocol (QP) which sets out clear standards for the production of digestate from organic waste.
Since there will no longer be a requirement to pay the charges associated with waste regulations, it will be cheaper and easier for businesses and the agricultural community to use it on farmland. The Quality Protocol for the production and use of quality outputs from Anaerobic Digestion, will reduce the amount of regulation involved in using digestate. The QP will do this by defining when the material ceases to be a waste and becomes a product.
The QP has been developed by the Waste Protocols Project – a joint WRAP and Environment Agency initiative - in close consultation with the Renewable Energy Association and other industry bodies. The relaxed regulations will come into force when individual AD plants become accredited to the QP. The QP also stipulates compliance with the proposed quality standard for digestate, PAS110, due to be published later this autumn by BSI British Standards.
It is hoped that the introduction of the QP will provide farmers and other users of digestate with greater confidence in the product. The QP provides a definition of the minimum standards required to collect, transport, store, recycle and reuse source-segregated biodegradable waste. As such, the QP can save businesses the time and costs associated with meeting waste regulations, without harming human health and the environment.
Dr Richard Swannell, Director of Retail and Organics at WRAP, said: “QP compliant products from the Anaerobic Digestion process will provide users with the assurance they need that these new products derived from waste material conform to agreed quality standards. This in turn will make it easier for industry to market and sell them. The project has worked with the Renewable Energy Association (REA), the Environmental Services Association (ESA) and the Association for Organics Recycling (AFOR) to develop this QP and have consulted widely within the relevant sectors.”
Martin Brocklehurst, Head of Environment and Business Partnerships at the Environment Agency, said: “The QP is a major milestone for the AD industry, which could help the UK deliver on wider climate change and environmental objectives. In the UK, we produce 100 million tonnes of food and other organic waste every year that we could be using to create enough heat and energy to run over two million homes In the long-term, greater use of products derived from the AD process should help to reduce the amount of organic waste unnecessarily being sent to landfill every year and save producers the associated disposal costs.”
The Quality Protocol for the products of Anaerobic Digestion can be downloaded from the Environment Agency website.
| Zurück |
|
