Enhancing sustainable biowaste management in the UK: the role of the commercial and community composting sectors

Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The management of household biowaste in the UK has undergone significant changes during the last decade. Legislation and policy have promoted the rapid development of a diverse composting sector. The sector can be divided into three categories: home composting; community composting; and commercial composting. This paper explores the growth in, and nature of, the commercial and community composting sectors and argues that both sectors have different but important contributions to make towards enhancing sustainable biowaste management in the UK 1. The commercial composting sector is characterised by increasingly larger-scale, centralised and mechanised sites producing certified quality composts. Growth in the sector to-date has relied predominantly on composting household garden waste in open-air sites using mechanically turned windrow processes, and around 75% of compost is now produced at sites certified or working towards Quality Protocol standards (Slater et al, 2005; Smith et al, 2008; AFOR, 2009). Over the last decade the quantity of material composted by the commercial sector has grown significantly, at a rate of 24% per annum, increasing from 833thousand (k) tonnes in 1999 to 3.6 million tonnes (Mt) in 2006/07. Commercial composting now makes a significant contribution to biowaste management and to achieving European and national targets. Of the 8.3Mt of household waste collected for recycling and composting by local authorities in England in 2007/08, composting accounted for over one-third (Defra, 2008a). Thus the contribution towards sustainable biowaste management from commercial composting can be summarised as composting on a large scale and the production of quality products. The community composting sector operates very-small scale decentralised sites with the majority of groups involved in a number of activities often related to local sustainability such as conservation, community gardens, local food production, city farms, re-use and recycling. In addition, some groups provide training and work placement opportunities for vulnerable adults and most groups are supported by volunteer activity. Community composting groups often have wider social and environmental objectives that composting helps to achieve. Most established groups operate in areas unsuitable for conventional biowaste collections, such as areas of highly dispersed or high density populations. Although the community sector has also undergone rapid development over the last decade, increasing from 1.5k …