Where is the end of waste?

By Anne Velenturf, David Tompkins, Rachel Marshall and Alfonso Lag Brotons

Resource Recovery from Waste hosted a specialist session on “End-of-Waste” at the European Biosolids and Organic Resources conference organised by Aqua Enviro in November 2017. Achieving End-of-Waste (EoW) is important now that the Resource Recovery from Waste projects start to work towards commercialisation of new technologies and applications that can recover resources from, for example, industrial landfills, bioenergy residues and wastewater. Research and subsequent commercialisation efforts are riddled with regulatory challenges of which the EoW process is an important part. With this session we aimed to clarify how we can best achieve EoW in practice, especially with the Environment Agency’s Definition of Waste panel being closed for new applications for a considerable time. What lessons can we learn from the regulator and companies active in this space?

In the specialist session, Clive Humphreys from the Environment Agency explained the basic requirements for achieving EoW:

Distinct product that is different from original waste.
Clear and demonstrable market, which may need to be developed as part of achieving EoW.
Product can be used in same way as non-waste alternative, usually this is assessed through
comparison with an appropriate ‘virgin’ material.
Product can be stored and used with no worse environmental effects than the material it
replaces.

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