WASTE MANAGEMENT and recycling company Biffa has announced that it is using recycled cooking oil – B100 – to run an entire municipal waste collection fleet, achieving a first in the UK in doing so.
Biffa revealed that using the biodiesel has reduced the fleet’s CO2 emissions by 78% and is amongst the lowest carbon options for fleet fuel.
Biffa’s Integrated Waste Management (IWM) team set up a collection agreement in 2011 with biofuel producer Convert2Green to convert customers’ used cooking oil into biodiesel. To date, Biffa IWM has collected close to 700,000 litres of used cooking oil from its customers, and its municipal division has used over 1.3 million litres of biodiesel in its collection fleets.
The relationship between Biffa IWM, its broad customer base, Biffa Municipal and Convert2Green is providing a circular economy materials recovery system, an approach which is dramatically reducing the environmental impacts of food production, related haulage and waste transport.
By using waste oil from key IWM customers such as Birds Eye, Premier Foods and Gatwick Airport, the scheme is also reducing the carbon impact of key IWM customers.
Robin Chambers, General Manager of Biffa’s IWM business, commented on the scheme: “By recovering our clients’ used cooking oil, we are not only reducing their waste management costs but also making a significant improvement to the environmental impact of their operations. In turn, some of Biffa’s Municipal fleets are powered by the fuel recovered by C2G, enabling local authority clients to meet key targets and reducing the climate-changing impacts of fossil fuels. This is a fine example of what can be done through collaboration and innovation to sustain an ‘eco-economy’.”
The initiative was recently highly commended in the category of “Carbon reduction through use of alternative low carbon fuels and technologies” at the Freight Transport Association’s Logistics Carbon Reduction Scheme Awards.
