Scotland opens grant fund for MRF sampling equipment
Zero Waste Scotland, the body that delivers the Scottish Government’s Zero Waste Plan, has launched a new £90,000 capital grant fund for materials recovery facility (MRF) operators to purchase standardised testing equipment to test, monitor and record their material quality.
The MRF Quality Testing Infrastructure fund comes ahead of the Scottish Government’s MRF Code of Practice (CoP, part of the Recyclate Quality Action Plan), set for introduction in 2015, which aims to improve the quality of materials processed through facilities handling more than 1,000 tonnes of dry mixed recyclables per year.
It follows on from a consultation launched on the CoP in 2012 that estimated that the cost of acquiring and disseminating information on the composition of MRF inputs and outputs would cost £260,000 for all Scottish MRFs, implying a ‘one-off’ cost of approximately £12,000 per MRF.
As such, grants of up to £10,000 are available towards the capital costs for infrastructure, plant and testing equipment that demonstrate an improvement in dry recyclable material input and output quality.
Projects must be installed and fully operational by 31 March 2015.
The funding programme will operate on a rolling basis, with the final deadline for applications 12 noon on 15 December 2014.
Zeros Waste Scotland may provide testing training
Announcing the funding this morning, Iain Gulland, Chief Executive of the newly-independent Zero Waste Scotland body, said: “I’m delighted to announce this new funding, which will provide MRF operators with the financial assistance to allow them to introduce quality testing infrastructure to meet the future requirements of the MRF Code of Practice. In addition to this funding, we are looking at the possibility of offering training on improved quality testing and data reporting processes to support the introduction of the Code of Practice.
“By improving the quality of materials entering the market, we’re keeping them in a high-value state for as long as possible, helping to contribute to the development of a circular economy – where resources flow in a cycle of reuse rather than being wasted.”
MRF CoP details
Akin to the Material Facility (MF) Regulations already in force in England and Wales, the Code of Practice requires MRF operators to employ standardised testing processes and reporting mechanisms for all input and output materials. However, the Scottish version applies to both ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ MRFs (those separating recyclates that have been collected separately, as well as those that separate recyclates from residual waste).
Inputs will be sampled for the purpose of revealing the extent to which non-targeted materials or contaminants are entering the MRF and to provide the operator with compositional information on inputs and how they change on a seasonal basis.
There will also be a requirement for operators to sample waste separately for individual local authority customers, and jointly for commercial and industrial (C&I) waste. Information collected for inputs, as well for each category of output (e.g. individual grades of paper, plastics, metals, glass), will include:
- percentage of each targeted material;
- percentage of non-targeted material that is capable of being economically recycled; and
- percentage of non-targeted material that is non-recyclable.
Residual waste for export to landfill or EfW will also need be sampled to identify recyclable and non-recyclable content.
MRF operators who come under the scope of this provision will be required to adopt a mandatory testing regime and to report on a quarterly basis to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).
Find out more about the MRF Quality Testing Infrastructure fund.
