Date of visit: 2 April
2008.
Tour leader: Mr Ian Wallace, Bioganix property
and projects manager.
Background
In 2005, Bioganix plc was
successful in bidding for a ten year contract to process
source separated kitchen waste for Suffolk County Council.
To deliver this contract, Bioganix purchased a former waste
transfer station at Parham near Ipswich and started construction of
the new factory in January 2006.
The Parham plant became
fully operational in May 2006 and from June 2006 has taken
compostable domestic waste, including gardening waste, food
waste (including meat and fish waste and bones), shredded
paper and cardboard, from Suffolk Coastal District
Council. In 2008 it started taking deliveries of
domestic food waste from Waveney District Council.
Update - on the 10 February 2009,
Bioganix plc went into adminstration. Food and garden waste
collected in Suffolk Coastal and Waveney will continue to be
processed at Parham by the
Countryside Group (new window).
Summary of the tour
17 people arrived and were shown
around the site. We saw the doors where the vehicles go in to
drop the compostables and where they go to collect. Vehicles
delivering and collecting material enter via an airlock
system; negative air pressure is maintained within the
building which prevents exchange of unscrubbed air within the
building with air from outside. Emissions from the building
are controlled by a system of air scrubbers which were viewed
on the exterior of the building.
We then went to the
viewing platform where we could see a pile of compostable
waste waiting to be mixed and chopped before entering large
steel drums. These continually rotate to mix and aerate the
waste accelerating the composting process in a controlled
environment.
The resulting compost is then screened to 12mm before the final
pasteurisation stage where the material is heated to 70°C to
destroy pathogens. After which the compost is delivered to local
farmers and others for use as a soil conditioner. The group were
given an opportunity to handle a refrigerated sample of the product
which had a low odour and a good texture making it an ideal soil
conditioner.
Conclusion
This was a very interesting and informative visit and really
brought home the importance of ensuring that no plastics or other
non-compostables end up in our brown bins. Of course the best thing
to do with your garden waste is to compost it yourself but when you
have no room and/or when you have cooked food and cardboard that
you need to get rid of the brown bin collection service provides an
ideal solution.
Many other local authorities that have implemented alternate
weekly collections only collect food waste once a fortnight with
the residual waste, and as a result are open to negative publicity
and public complaint about putrescible waste waiting for up to a
fortnight to be collected resulting in maggots and smells.
The existence of the facility at Parham has enabled Suffolk
Coastal to avoid such criticism, as households that now have
alternate weekly collections of refuse and recyclable/compostable
items, have the option of continuing to have a weekly collection of
this putrescible fraction of the domestic waste.
As such the Bioganix facility at Parham has been a very
important element of the successful implementation of alternate
weekly refuse and recycling collection in this
district.