Article reproduced, with kind permission, from the July 2001 issue of the Institute of Wastes Management Journal "Wastes Management".

RLCL Study Tour - Holland & Belgium, May 2001

By Chris Davey (Chairman LARAC/West Sussex County Council)
and Robert Walker (Robert Long Consultancy Limited)

In a change to the previous format of hosting conferences for existing and potential clients, this year the waste management practice Robert Long Consultancy decided to run a study tour to Holland and Belgium. As some of the locations on the tour are commercially sensitive, the 33 delegates had no direct commercial interests and most were local government officers, councillors or representatives of trade bodies. There were two main subjects for the study tour: above/below ground waste/recycling containers and the recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

The proposed EU Directive on WEEE is well down the road to adoption but the systems for delivering the targets in the UK have yet to be developed. Given Robert Long Consultancy's involvement with other producer responsibility initiatives it was a natural topic for the study tour. It gave delegates the opportunity to stay ahead of the game, picking up some knowledge, contacts and experience of the continental approach well before any of the delegates had needed to make any decisions about complying with the Directive. 

Netwerk, Dordrecht

The first part of the study tour was to visit Netwerk, a company owned by four local authorities in the southern part of the Netherlands. Netwerk's Dordrecht operation serves 120,000 people and collects 66,700 tpa household waste. Of this, 40% is recycled or composted (not including construction/demolition waste or ash recycling) and the remainder incinerated at a 240,000 tpa incinerator in Dordrecht that serves some 17 local authorities. Only incineration residues go to the one large landraise facility as landraise void is at such a premium, literally a premium at £78/t including tax. It is illegal to landfill mixed household waste in the Netherlands. 

Three years ago a pilot waste collection scheme began using underground containers for collecting both residual household waste and recyclables in the historic centre of Dordrecht. This scheme was developed when, in an attempt to reduce the amount of sick leave taken, the workload of each 3-man crew was limited to emptying 1130 (number) wheelie bins per day. This limit had reduced Netwerk's productivity by 25%. Netwerk decided to try OMB's mechanised collection scheme that allows one-man operation, in this case collecting both above and below ground containers with existing but modified side-loading vehicles.

The underground containers in Dordrecht are mainly used for multi-occupancy buildings and it was the underground glass recycling containers which most impressed the delegates. These were quiet and unobtrusive, leaving just the metre high posts above the ground, one for each colour of glass. In Dordrecht, commercial waste is also collected in the underground containers. 

Netwerk believe that the automated collection system makes for better working conditions for the operatives and a better environment around the containers as waste should no longer left outside the containers. The capacity of the containers can be much larger underground, so instead of 1100 litre wheeled bins, they now use containers with 3000-5000 litre capacity for glass, paper and biowaste for recycling and also for residual waste. Between 2 and 3% of Dordrecht's household waste is collected in underground containers and Netwerk as a whole has 25 underground containers. Each container costs about £6,250, but the associated concrete construction costs anything from £1,500 in the suburbs to £9,400 in the city centre where the cables in the ground make installation difficult. The investment is repaid by the productivity of the collection operatives, who can empty each container in less than two minutes. This means that one man can do more than three had previously.

Each underground container has access for the fire brigade to flood it with water if there is an arson attack. The same access can be used by a gully emptier to remove any water which might seep in from the water table which is just as high in Dordrecht as it is in the UK at the moment. OMB are developing a remote weighing system to help schedule collections for when the containers are nearing capacity. At present the drivers are relied upon to know from experience when each container will need emptying.

The tour also visited what they call an 'environmental street', a civic amenity site and transfer station with containers for 17 different types of waste. The CA site seemed enormous in comparison with the number of "customers", very clean and all bins were clearly labelled. The site had barrier-controlled entry and the containers were laid out in a horseshoe shape. The recycling containers came first and residual waste was the last container in the line. This allowed the site operatives to encourage the residents to divert as much as possible into recycling. There were separate low level containers at the end of the ring for soils and for hardcore. The CA site was surrounded by huge warehouses which allowed the bulking of WEEE prior to shipment to the reprocessors. In all, the site was 20,000m². 

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