Sam Wareing of Accelerated Compost considers the potential environmental and financial benefits of recycling the one waste material that many of us are either overlooking or are unaware of the processing options available - organic waste. 

What is the environmental damage of disposing food waste in landfill sites?

What issues do the latest composting technologies resolve?

As mankind's impact on the environment becomes more evident, everyday we are finding ourselves under increasing pressure to change our lifestyle, particularly to be more resourceful. From the householder through to multinational companies, we are being encouraged to turn off computer monitors and change to energy-saving products, all to reduce our carbon emissions or our overall 'footprints'.

You only have to turn on your television to see all the major news programmes leading with stories about the 'environmental crisis' we are approaching, or as some will have you believe, right in the middle of. One of the main publicity drives at present is to try and make us think about how much waste we produce and how we should become more conscious of the impact our choices of waste disposal have on the environment.

I am sure you already recycle or have made the effort to recycle your plastics, glass and paper - these items being reprocessed and reshaped into drinks coasters, polar fleeces, fridge magnets, children's pencil cases and even substitute sand in golf bunkers. Yet in almost all applications these materials make up just a small fraction of the total waste stream, both in volume and weight.

They also involve costly reprocessing at large centralised facilities, incurring high collection and transportation costs. Yet the one fraction of your waste stream that requires relatively low technology to treat, technology that can be used on site producing a product that can be utilised on site, possibly even sold, is probably the one that you have so far overlooked.

That waste stream is your organic waste. By 2010 we need to divert 25 per cent of the level of organic waste that we sent to landfill in 1995. Not plastics, glass or paper but organics - the one waste that so far too many of us are overlooking, or more likely we are unaware of the possible options available for the reprocessing of this waste.

Food waste disposed of in landfill sites produces methane, which itself has been found to be 20 times more harmful to the environment, in the contributory sense of the greenhouse effect compared to carbon dioxide. So it is understandable why it is food waste that the European Commission is trying to get us to divert away from landfill. If we continue to do so we will be fined £200 per tonne by the European Commission. This means if we continue land filling at our current rate we will be fined millions of pounds per year. Your costs to dispose of those wastes where landfill is the only option will become ridiculously high as the councils increase the taxes to cover the fines.

You are currently paying to dispose of your organic waste, whether it is on a weekly basis or in the form of an annual contract. But in either case you still have to pay your contractor to come and remove your waste and take it to landfill. This is more than likely done by weight and for the majority of you the organics you produce, particularly food waste, are the heaviest fraction. Their costs are going to increase by at least £8 per tonne every year meaning the amount they charge you will also increase. Add to this the increasing costs for these companies to fuel the large wagons they use and waste bills are only going to increase.

Organic wastes can be recycled using relatively low technology, and in the area in which they arise. They can also be reused locally. Thus the transport and lack of infrastructure problems that beset recycling of other commodities are removed. The process to do this has been happening for millions of years, long before humans graced the earth, and is the natural decomposition of anything that has once lived.

The process is one that everyone will have heard of and probably attempted - composting. Yet many people still think of composting as a relatively new solution. Your grandparents probably composted their garden waste long before the local council thought it was a good idea to provide them with their brown wheelie bins to take garden waste to centralised composting facilities.

Today, however, there is a wealth of systems available to give the operator more control over what is happening within the composting mass as well as reducing the period of time the composting process takes.

These new technologies enable many applications, including inner city areas short on space, to compost the organic waste they produce on-site, allowing just about any application to reap the benefits of the previously dismissed idea of composting on-site.

This use of technology is beneficial to both the environment and to the bank balance of the particular establishment in question. Admittedly available composting technologies do range in price, however those at the higher end of the market, while more expensive, have an equally comparable, long life expectancy and with the higher-volume waste streams can see quite thrifty return on investment.

The majority of systems available can now treat all food wastes including meats, cooked or uncooked, providing establishments with 'whole' solutions and making life much more straightforward for those who have to segregate the waste.

One of the most frequently reported and largest concerns with organic waste is the smell. Problems presently encountered arise when the food waste is deposited with the general waste stream. This particular problem results due to the frequency that the bins are collected or the compactor emptied. If they are only collected once a week or less, food waste will quickly begin to putrefy, especially in the warm summer months, resulting in unpleasant smells and attracting the odd unwanted visitor! The latest of the composting technologies, in-vessel systems (IVC), are enclosed and totally vermin-proof while containing any odours produced.

The majority of composting systems available are continuous processes allowing the operators to treat waste as it is produced rather than leaving it in a holding state until collected. With these new systems, the controlled composting process can be much quicker, with different manufacturers giving timescales of between 14 days and two months. So it looks like the traditional view that you may have had of your food waste being left in a heap on a spare bit of land for 6-12 months is becoming somewhat out-dated.

You are already in a position of getting ready for the impending waste management changes and are probably already well aware of the increases in waste disposal costs set to take their toll upon this year's budgets and are now aware of the impending legislation that tells us we need to be segregating our commercial waste as a minimum before collection. Perhaps now you should also be thinking of how we can even stop this waste leaving site. Obviously the first step we need to take is to reduce the amount of waste we produce and then reuse what we can.

If those options are not available then surely treating our waste on site ourselves where possible is the best economical decision? Now that the largest fraction and most unpalatable - food waste - has a solution in the form of the earlier mentioned IVC, perhaps composting really isn't a backbreaking and smelly task anymore.