Traditionally, the UK has been heavily reliant on landfill: of a total 28 million tonnes of municipal waste produced in 2000/01, more than three quarters of it - about 23 million tonnes - went to landfill. Only 12% was recycled or composted and 8% was incinerated with energy recovery. Our waste is growing by about 3% every year: more than the growth in GDP (2-2.5%) and one of the fastest European growth rates.
It doesn't have to be that way; certainly the Landfill Directive is beginning to play a major role in changing the way the UK handles waste, as it hits businesses in the pocket with its increasingly tough landfill tax rates. Yet while some manufacturers respond primarily to such financial penalties, others see waste and environmental management as a great opportunity to cut costs, streamline the business and be more environmentally responsible.
There can be few better practitioners of this philosophy than Saint-Gobain Glass UK (SGGUK), a manufacturer of flat glass and overall winner of the 2005 Deloitte Best Factory Award. SGGUK has slashed its waste from 5,000 tonnes per annum in 2001 to below 2,000 tonnes per annum now, at the same time becoming a net consumer of 36,000 tonnes of other people's waste. It is truly a remarkable achievement.
Based at Eggborough, Yorkshire, SGGUK manufactures and delivers around 200,000 tonnes of building quality glass per year to customers throughout the UK and Ireland, who use it to produce anything from double-glazed units, shower screens and curtain walling, to glass furniture and shop fronts. The fabrication processes in which those customers are engaged generate approximately 15-20% waste. Previously, this glass waste was land filled or at best - 25-30% of the time - sold to a cullet (waste glass) merchant for a very low price.
Now, as a result of a new initiative introduced by SGGUK, the vehicle delivering its glass also takes the glass waste back to the company's production facility, where it is inspected and recycled into its raw material feed stream. This cullet has reduced the company's consumption of raw materials by 18%-22% and of energy by around 8%, based on 2005 volumes.
Flat rate Although recycling of container glass is commonplace, flat glass is generally considered to be too contaminated and too expensive to recycle. However, SGGUK worked with its customers to ensure they kept damaged flat glass clean - while it also developed a system to transport the broken glass back on its delivery vehicles. The innovation behind this scheme lies in the use of what SGGUK calls 'The Big Bag', a patented, collapsible, durable bag which holds about a tonne of cullet and fits into the company's flat glass delivery vehicles for return journeys. SGGUK trained customers how to use the bags effectively and what constituted 'contaminants'.
SGGUK's corporate strategy centres around environmental considerations. The target is zero waste generated - but more relevant is that the business has become a net consumer of so much waste as well. As site director Alan McLenaghan stresses: "We are the cleanest float plant in the UK, with regard to our emissions to air. This is achieved with an electrostatic precipitator and by using high levels of recycled glass. Also, we have a commitment to increase re-use and recycling in all that we do - paper, printer cartridges, old IT equipment, pallets, metals, packaging materials and, of course, glass."
For every tonne of recycled cullet, SGGUK consumes 1.2 tonnes less in raw materials. That equates to a 3,600-tonne reduction in sand, dolomite and limestone quarried every month.
"For every 15 tonnes of recycled material, we eliminate one delivery of raw materials by road to site," adds McLenaghan. "Hence currently we have 200 fewer deliveries of raw materials per month, equating to a reduction of 70,000 miles of road haulage per month."
Moreover, for every tonne of recycled cullet, SGGUK consumes 0.7Mwh less energy. On top of all this, there is the positive impact on air emissions from glass reacting/melting. For every 1,000 tonnes of recycled cullet, it reduces CO2 emissions by 350 tonnes, while a further 100 tonnes of CO2 emission is eliminated by avoiding the energy-intensive manufacture of soda-ash as a virgin raw material. The company has also cut NOx emissions by more than half, while customer landfill has been reduced by 1,000 tonnes for every 1,500 tonnes of cullet recycled through its business. Hence landfill reduction in 2005 totalled 24,000 tonnes.
"This work demonstrates to our customers, our employees and our stakeholders that SGGUK is actively promoting the protection of our environment," states McLenaghan.
"The work allows a measurable environmental performance figure that everyone can understand. It also shows, alongside our cardboard recycle, energy management, paper recycle, printer cartridge recycle, scrap metal recycle, wood recycle and electrostatic precipitator operation, that we not only want to meet the company and legislative standards, but to go beyond them, and to be seen as an environmental leader in our business and community."
Nor does SGGUK intend to sit back and admire its handiwork to date. The potential benefits envisaged when the system is fully developed in the UK two years from now, include:
- 54,000 tonnes less quarried material consumption per annum
- 3,000 fewer deliveries of raw materials by road to site per annum - equating to a reduction of more than a million miles of road haulage per annum
- 32,000Mwh less energy consumed in SGGUK's process per annum
- SGGUK emissions to atmosphere by far the lowest of any float plant in the UK
- customer landfill reduced by 30,000 tonnes per annum.
The organisation's 10-year global plan envisages potential benefits that are even more impressive and which include cutting quarried material consumption by 1.3 million tonnes per annum; reducing road haulage by more than 14 million miles each year; consuming 800,000Mwh less energy a year; and cutting customer landfill by 750,000 tonnes per annum.
SGGUK's achievements have not gone unnoticed. In fact, having won the Factory of the Year award in 2005, partly in recognition of its environmental commitment, it has just added a BCE (Business Commitment to the Environment) Premier Award. This is in recognition of the company's attitude to the environment and, in particular, for developing a flat glass recycle programme that, after five years of operation, now provides more than a quarter of the company's raw material feedstock, while also achieving a site solid waste reduction of 75%.
Like SGGUK, more and more manufacturers are taking a keen interest in waste and environmental management - and the Landfill Directive is a key driver. As Ian Wakelin, managing director of recycling-led waste management company Materials Recovery Limited (MRL), points out, the impact on UK businesses is becoming significant.
The waste industry is becoming extremely legislative driven," Wakelin says. "The amalgamation of the landfill tax and these legislations has meant UK businesses need to have a clear strategic direction and thinking when it comes to waste."
MRL, which provides national coverage to the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as local authorities, has found a number of common - and, he says, often worrying - traits and occurrences within UK businesses, in terms of their current waste strategies, including:
- multi-site organisations have various contractors servicing their sites
- no single contact - so organisations don't really have control or a grasp of their true waste spend
- single site organisations do not know all potential waste streams
- complex legislation means organisations are unsure whether they are compliant or not - or need to be
- many organisations simply look at reducing unit cost price for waste to landfill, rather than understand the potential financial benefits of recycling.
"Organisations need to amend their mind set and culture from one of sending waste to landfill, to recycling and rationalising their waste streams," states Wakelin. "This change in culture may be apparent and seen as a necessity in the eyes of the organisation's directors. However, the company's workforce may not see this in the same light. So before any change in strategy occurs, organisations must ensure a clear communication plan is implemented. This is paramount to ensuring the workforce understands the reasoning for the change in its culture and the impact they have by compiling with this change."
MRL works with businesses to deliver such communications and training, to ensure the workforce complies and understands the change in culture. It offers a bespoke solution to industrial and commercial organisation, whether they be a single or a multi-site organisation.
"It's not just about being green," adds Wakelin. "I don't know of any business that would recycle a plastic container if that didn't save them money. What drives a successful waste recycling initiative is the process of identifying your three primary waste streams - paper/cardboard, plastics and metals - and ensuring there is sufficient mass of all three to make handling and transportation an economically sound proposition." A typical saving for customers who initiate such schemes is 15-20%.
In control Pavilion Technologies - a leader in providing environmental compliance and advanced process control (APC) solutions to the process industries - believes its systems can help to deliver important waste management benefits by enabling manufacturers to improve the productivity and efficiency of a process, providing an 'intelligence layer' on top of a distributed control system. In fact, using natural resources and intermediate products more effectively - eliminating flaring events, and reducing off-specification and waste material - are, according to Paul Reinermann, Pavilion's environmental and regulatory affairs director, often the overlooked, but important, environmental benefits of an APC solution.
"Manufacturers that deploy APC are reducing process variability, resulting in reduced energy costs, enhanced product quality and increased production," he comments. "At a recent symposium, a major aluminium manufacturer described the production and environmental benefits of an APC solution. Deploying APC on six kilns, the client reduced process variability by more than 50% and was able to maintain calcium fluoride below 1.5% and increased kiln throughput by up to 5%, when allowed by the downstream converter operation. The customer reported that, with APC, the process was now so stable that the 'positive pressure incidents' had been eliminated, reducing uncontrolled, fugitive emissions significantly - lower than all other previous years."
With the landfill tax going up substantially every year - and this will continue indefinitely - more and more businesses are realising there is an alternative and that the economics of recycling really do make sense. Not only can they cut emissions and waste, they can also bring down costs and boost profitability. Just ask SGGUK.
