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Waste and the environment

What Waste There is

Waste from office premises is included in household and commercial waste, which forms 9% of the 400 million tonnes of total solid waste produced annually in the country. The overall breakdown is shown in Figure 1.

The total amount of soled waste produced each year is equivalent to 19.2 tonnes per household.

Figure 1: Sources of Solid Waste disposal

The laws governing waste management classify household and commercial waste in the 'controlled waste' category, the disposal of which is governed by a licensing system set up under the Control of Pollution Act, 1974, now being superseded by the EPA 1990. Most waste (about 85%) goes into landfill sites - only 5% is currently recycled, whilst the remaining 10% is incinerated. Both the UK Government and the European Union subscribe to the idea of a waste hierarchy, which sets out the preferred options for dealing with waste. The current UK position, as given in the UK Strategy for Sustainable Development, lists the options as:

Reduction

Reuse

Recovery (including recycling and energy recovery)

Disposal without energy recovery by incineration or landfill

This contrasts with the hierarchy as previously defined in 1991 in a Department of the Environment waste management paper, in which the recovery of materials through recycling is placed higher up the hierarchy than producing energy from waste. There is a great deal of discussion currently taking place about incineration with energy recovery as a waste management option, and the extent to which it is more energy efficient than materials recycling for certain types of waste.

Waste disposal and the environmental issues

All means of dealing with waste once it exists affect the environment. Transporting waste uses resources and creates pollution. Different types of waste produce different hazards. Some, such as glass and rubble, are inert and, once landfilled, cause little further environmental damage. Some, about 1% are hazardous, legally defined as 'special wastes'. These include spent chemicals, clinical waste and laboratory waste, requiring a range of special treatments to reduce their environmental impact. A high percentage, 60%, of waste is putrescible including food, garden, agricultural waste and sewage. This type of waste can be highly polluting without careful management.

Burying it - landfill sites

Landfilling waste means that it is put into holes in the ground, often former quarries or mineral workings.

Modern landfill sites are lined and capped to prevent movement of water, but there are thousands of old sites which have not been lined. There are some 4000 landfill sates in the country. The key environmental concerns are:

• Chemical and other substances can leak out to pollute water and the surrounding countryside.
• The build up of methane gas, a powerful greenhouse gas, from putrescible waste in landfill sites can pose a hazard if not carefully controlled.
• Spontaneous combustion can occur, producing underground fires.
• As sites fill up, waste has to be transported over long distances, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions and thus contributing to the green house effect, along with more local problems of heavy lorries in rural areas.

Burn it - incineration

Incineration means burning the waste. Modern incinerators are designed to minimise the resultant air pollution, and are extremely costly to build. There are about 30 incinerators at present in the UK, of which only a few are used to produce energy. Many people are still very opposed to the building of waste incinerators near their homes. The main concerns are:

• High initial investment cost means that the need for a return may result in waste being incinerated rather than recycled, even if recycling would be more environmentally beneficial.
• Large quantities of waste are needed, so there may be extensive transport movements, unless the plant is sited in a major population centre.
• Strict anti-pollution measures are required to control air pollution, with particular concern about dioxin production.
• Up to 30% by weight of the original waste remains to be landfilled and this is often more toxic than the original material.
• The availability of incineration reduces the incentive to minimise waste production in the first place.

Reprocessing - recycling

Recycling means the reprocessing of materials to make new items. This is an industrial process, which will have environmental impacts. Recycling, therefore, is not as environmentally desirable as reducing waste production in the first place. The relevant concerns are:

• Recycling uses energy and causes pollution.
  In broad terms, these impacts are usually less than for the manufacture of the same material from virgin sources.
• The collection and sorting of materials for recycling may also involve inputs of energy.
• Taking recyclables to recycling banks by car can use more energy than is saved by using recycled material, unless the journey is combined with another purpose.
• Certain types of material, particularly contaminated paper and plastic, are not suitable for recycling.

Other means of dealing with waste

Given the problems associated with the three current ways of disposing of waste, research is constantly being pursued into other possibilities.

The one receiving most attention at present for household and commercial waste is composting.

Any organic waste can be composted, including food, garden and parks waste and paper. In some instances, councils are encouraging people to compost their own kitchen waste at home.

Other councils are providing centralised facilities, and selling the resultant compost.

Office and Commercial Wastes

Regularly arising office wastes can be broadly grouped into two categories. Firstly, there are those which are part and parcel of the type of work taking place, such as paper, envelopes, packaging, printing and writing supplies. Secondly, there are wastes which result from the normal everyday needs of the people working on the premises. These include catering items, food and drink containers, cleaning materials and washroom requirements. A third, more intermittent, category is redundant equipment and furniture. There is little information from which to estimate the total amount of such wastes.

Some analyses show that office wastes contain over 80% discarded stationery. Wastes from catering and leisure facilities contain significant amounts of glass, beverage cans, plastics, paper and board packaging and food waste.

Estimates of the potential recoverable waste from commercial premises over a year are.

• 0.8-0.9 million tonnes of paper and board
• 0.1-0.2 million tonnes of plastic
• 0.3-0.4 million tonnes of glass
• 0.1-0.15 million tonnes of aluminium

(Source - Waste Management Paper 28, p 27-28)

A survey of the waste from a multi-occupied office block in the City of London concluded that each employee generated 0.74 kg of waste each day or 192 kg per year. The total percentage of paper contained in the waste was 91%. Excluding paper waste which was set aside for recycling or for shredding the breakdown of waste by weight in one sample was as follows:

Figure 2: Types of waste arising in a multi-occupied office block in the City of London

(Journal of Waste Management and Resource Recovery, Vol 1 No 2, 1994)

Office and commercial waste is either collected by local authorities, for a charge, or by private contractors. It is usually unsorted, unless arrangements have been made to have some of the waste collected separately for recycling. This situation may change as some wastes are reclassified under the EPA 1990. In future, certain types of battery for example, may have to be collected separately and many businesses are likely to be affected by these changes, including common high street shops such as pharmacists and dry cleaners. The EPA 1990 places a legal liability on company directors to exercise a Duty of Care that their company's waste is stored, transported and disposed of in compliance with the Act. This includes waste collected for recycling specifically, directors are required to give an accurate account of the company's waste stream and check that the waste carrier is registered and the disposal route is suitably licensed to take the appropriate classes of waste. Non-compliance can result in fines which can be up to £20,000, or 6 months imprisonment The Government department concerned is the Department of the Environment, and they can be contacted for information concerning the Duty of Care legislation.   

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