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SITA UK diverting contaminated wood from landfill

Posted on Friday, 06 June 2008 08:41AM by
SITA UK has developed a new facility to divert thousands of tonnes of contaminated wood from landfill - and the company has plans to develop similar facilities across the country.
The new processing facility at Flixborough Wharf - a port in Lincolnshire - takes contaminated wood and chips it for re-use either as a fuel or for recycling purposes. In addition, ferrous metal inclusions are removed during the process. The wood, which includes MDF, painted, veneered and resin-bonded material, is processed to order and customer specification with the first loads being used as a feedstock for combined heat and power (CHP) facilities.
The first load of processed material - 1,100 tonnes - was shipped to Sweden in April.
Stuart Hayward-Higham, Head of New Market Business Development at SITA UK, said: “For some time producers of contaminated wood waste materials have had limited treatment and disposal options with the majority of this material ending up in landfill. By creating a product we can market, we can now sell this material for re-use as a fuel to power combined heat and power (CHP) facilities or other specific recycling uses. This is a much more sustainable way of managing this waste stream, even when you take the carbon footprint of transportation into account.”
The wood comes from household waste recycling centres and commercial clients.
Stuart Hayward-Higham said: “The market for use of this material in the UK is small at the moment, but we expect this will develop quickly due to the number of biomass CHP facilities that are in the pipeline. Currently the main interest is from Northern European countries, which already have a network of CHP facilities that run on this type of fuel.
As a result, we have based our Lincolnshire reprocessing facility at the docks and we are looking to develop others across the country. A spin off benefit is that we are helping to add new commercial activities to existing port facilities and are contributing to their economic well-being.”
SITA UK has worked closely with the Environment Agencies in the UK and Sweden to obtain trans-frontier shipment permissions to transport the wood overseas.
SITA UK has also found a potential use for the fines (similar to sawdust), which are a by-product of the chipping process. If the ongoing trials are successful this will mean almost all the material delivered to the facility will be used productively.
Mr Hayward-Higham added: “We are working with our colleagues across the UK and Europe to develop new outlets for this material. This is a win-win solution for the company and the environment because instead of paying to landfill this material, we are recovering value in both areas.” Up to 100,000 tonnes diversion from landfill will be achieved in 2008.
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