Growing Demand

The Government-produced Waste Strategy 2000 has buoyed up business by setting local authorities the target of composting or recycling 30% household waste by 2010. Peter Mills, composting manager for Onyx, said: "It's a fantastic market at the moment. It has been for some time. We can't keep up with demand." As the composting market grows, competition becomes rife. Paddy Johnston of TJ Composting Services said: "The results of the increasing popularity of large-scale composting is a more competitive market." The Landfill Directive has other targets for the UK with regard to compostable waste. By 2013, we must reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste landfilled to 50% of that produced in 1995, so there is plenty of room for more players in the market. But many smaller operators may be bought out by larger companies in the process of achieving this, Mr Johnston predicted. "Some of the larger waste management companies are starting to realise the benefits of composting and waking up to the fact that their prime resource, landfill, is diminishing. They're slowly realising that there's other things they should be doing, while local authorities are asking the suppliers of their waste services to provide composting services too." Awareness Efforts to establish compost as a quality product are opening up the retail market. This will add to compost's usual scope of agriculture and landscaping. "There is a growing awareness of green waste compost by end users," said Mr Mills. This has been aided by its promotion on television gardening shows and the new Apex compost brand produced for garden centres across the UK by SITA, Onyx and Cleanaway. For the moment, compost is competing with peat as a soil improving product. Because peat is light and easy to transport, it is relatively cheap - around £3 for a 50l bag sold in a garden centre. In order to compete, compost prices are forced to stay at a comparably low level, despite the material's higher transportation and processing costs. Not many composters have yet taken on the horticulture market, which uses growing media on their own to cultivate plants. But the next year will see some composters targeting this market with a new quality-assured product.

Catering Waste

Following June's risk assessment on the composting of material containing animal by-products (ABPs), it seems likely that when the government produces new legislation at the end of 2002, it will allow catering wastes to be composted as long as some sort of in- vessel system is used. Experts estimate that the expense of using in-vessel systems could push the price of disposal up from its present level of £17-24 per tonne of green waste to as much as £30 per tonne for material containing catering waste. This price change will come about in the next few years as local authorities keen to compost kitchen waste renew their contracts. However, most experts think the high cost of composting catering waste will limit interest from local authorities initially. The Landfill Tax is currently £13 per tonne, but until it rises by £5-6, (the current rate is £1 a year) local authorities are unlikely to be greatly tempted to compost catering waste, Mr Johnston said. Mr Mills agreed: "If people want to treat catering waste, they will need a massive infrastructure. Onyx calculated that £8 million investment would be needed for a site to produce 40,000 tonnes, including the cost of buildings and machines." And catering waste compost would have to be tested before it could be sure of a market, he added, making schemes slower to take off. "Markets can be found but I don't think the demand for catering waste compost is going to be very significant at first" he said.

On-farm

Probably the biggest hidden threat to the compost business is the emergence of small, farm-based composting operations over the past year. These are exempt from the normally strict controls that apply to large sites, so can afford to operate at lower costs - with the effect that they could force compost processing and selling prices down in the next few years. On-farm schemes producing less than about 5,000 tonnes a year and which only use that compost on their own land are exempt from the need for a waste management license and the controls that go with it. So they can take green waste from councils and companies for approximately half of what a larger site would charge - £10 per tonne rather than the current price of £17-24. "When a local authority comes to do a new contract, the price is still a major factor, even though other factors are also meant to play a part," said one expert. But he warned that councils should check if smaller sites were composting material properly - if not, it might not be counted as compost in future evaluations of targets.

Equally worryingly, there has been an increase in the last year of farms breaking regulations and selling or giving away their compost. Legitimate composters complain this has been done at a cost to heavily-regulated big farms as it both lowers the market value of compost and could damage its new-found image as a high quality product. A spokeswoman for compost distributor Freeland Horticulture said there was a problem. "There has been a lot of on- farm composting recently by farms who don't really know what they're doing and who are selling it illegally," she said. Benefits With little enforcement action being taken against farms selling a low quality product, higher quality materials must rely on additional benefits, such as quality assurance marks like the BSI standard which is now being consulted on, and proper health and safety procedures to ensure a sale. But there are, concerns about what could happen if nothing is done. "In a year's time, if enforcement has not increased, the situation will be as bad as it is now, if not worse," warned SITA composting manager Stephen Wise. Mr Mills agreed: "This needs to be addressed within the next six months - or prices could start falling."

We think you would enjoy reading the views on on-farm composting from another angle.  We have tried to answer some of their concern in the subsequent section.

Views from the Moderator's Desk