"We believe that WRG, through the services that we provide, already brings a positive environmental benefit to society, but we clearly also release carbon dioxide and it’s right that we try to evaluate and minimise this impact"
Graham Watson, WRG’s Environment Manager
Northampton, England: Waste Recycling Group (WRG) has today published details of its first proposal to measure and report on, the Company’s overall carbon impact.
The draft calculation was undertaken for the Group’s eighth annual Corporate Responsibility Report which covers the calendar year 2006.
The company uses the principle of landfill carbon sequestration in its calculation of its carbon impact, but acknowledges the debate that may ensue saying: "We expect that the issues surrounding ‘sequestration’ or in simple terms the ‘locking-in’ of carbon at a landfill will prompt some debate or response".
The company's goal is to benchmark its carbon balance in order to help set meaningful improvement targets based upon efficiency. WRG says that this will also help its stakeholders to understand better the overall performance of the business over time
WRG, which is owned by the Spanish construction and services group Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), is one of the UK’s largest waste management and energy recovery companies.
Wood is said to be non-degradable in landfill
The report indicates that the past year has seen a number of advances in the environmental agenda, including a keen interest in data on climate change and carbon, which in turn has been mirrored in the media and government’s stance on these issues.
Questions have been asked of WRG about its ‘carbon efficiency’, ‘carbon impact’, ‘carbon profile’ and ‘carbon footprint’. However there are currently no set means of calculation or common definitions available. The report provides a sample calculation based upon WRG data that is propose to be use as a benchmark for future target setting.
In the report WRG indicates that it expects to see a greater integration with Focsa Services (UK) Ltd, WRG’s sister company, and a ‘broader view taken of the provision of the types of facilities needed by its customers to meet the requirements of legislation’.
However WRG retains the view that EfW will be a key component of some regional waste strategies.
Graham Watson, WRG’s Environment Manager, explained:
“There is increasing interest in businesses being able to understand and quantify the overall carbon impact of their activities. We believe that WRG, through the services that we provide, already brings a positive environmental benefit to society, but we clearly also release carbon dioxide and it’s right that we try to evaluate and minimise this impact.
“We have set out our initial calculations for all to see in our 2006 Corporate Responsibility Report. There is as yet no commonly accepted definition of the terminology or process to calculate a waste management company’s overall carbon impact so we accept that our proposal will need refining and will benefit from further work. We also hope that others will comment on our calculations and contribute to our thinking”.
The methodology
WRG says that its specimen carbon balance process first estimates the Company’s gross carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Next, the biogenic CO2 (carbon dioxide contained in waste materials that is absorbed and released in a natural cycle by plants and animals) is discounted. In the next stage the avoided carbon emissions – due to the generation of electricity from waste, and the recycling of materials such as glass – are also discounted. Finally, an estimate is made of the CO2 that is sequestered, or “locked up”, when materials are deposited in landfill sites.
Using this methodology, WRG has estimated its total carbon impact for 2005/6 as equivalent to 1,175,256 tonnes of CO2.
WRG considers that plastics, the lignin content of products and wood, will not degrade under landfill conditions and hence are pulled out of the equation through "long term" storage or sequestration.
Sequestration in landfill over the long term will be, of course, very debatable. There are issues on what is long term, it is likely that most carbon based materials will degrade with a long enough period available (over a few hundreds of years) and conditions in landfill will not stay anaerobic for ever. There is a danger that the discharge of CO2 will simply be delayed to a future time in which atmospheric levels will be considerably higher than today.
However the approach adopted by WRG is based on research findings which consider that landfills should be treated as a, so far underestimated, 'carbon sink'. The WRG report should be consulted for further detail on this important topic and references.
(An interesting possibility is that some future generation with perhaps scarce resources available, may in fact re-work or mine old landfills to recover the plastics or metals contained in or below the waste body.)
Further information
Full details of WRG’s carbon balance calculations can be found in the 2006 Corporate Responsibility Report at www.wrg.co.uk/safety/cse.asp
Waste Recycling Group Limited, a leading UK waste management and energy recovery company, is part of Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC) the international construction and services group (www.fcc.es). FCC in the UK comprises WRG and Focsa Services (UK) Ltd.
Focused on delivering integrated waste management and energy recovery solutions to meet national, regional and local needs, WRG operates facilities for the reception, recycling and disposal of waste, including a network of waste transfer and recycling centres and a regional network of landfill sites.