Sunday 19 June 2016

Flies the limit!

Oh to be a fly on the wall of the boardroom of Shows Waste Management / Go 4 Greener on the Tuesday morning after their trip into the lions den at the Fly Invasion meeting. Held at the Lonny Wilsoncroft Community Centre in the New Zealand area of Derby the meeting took place on 6th June 2016.
Trapped like flies in a spiders web at the front of the meeting venue one thing you can say in favour of those attending from the site in question was that they had balls to put themselves in front of an angry room of locals.
Site owner Sam Turton attended the meeting and was flanked by family members, staff from Shows Waste Management and also a representative of Colson Transport who for the 1st time we learned was working in some way with Shows Waste Management to clear the site.



 Reports after the meeting suggested that Colson Transport were to take the site on in some way once it is cleared. For those where the issue of the flies has buzzed under the radar you can catch up on my previous blog post here
http://derby-waste-a-rubbish-blog.blogspot.com/2016/06/would-you-like-flies-with-that.html
 
Lets just say it has been grim for many weeks now for those living close to the waste handling site.
Notably lacking in their attendance was anybody from Derby City Councils Environmental Health department and more importantly from the powers that be at the Environment Agency - who issued the site with the required permits to operate.
The lack of anyone from the Environment Agency led to the meeting being in a position where the sites owners and those supporting them were able to make statements regarding the site and the materials on the site which could not be challenged or even validated due to the lack of Environment Agency attendance.
The story peddled by Sam Turton and co from Shows appeared to be that the material was a product known as refuse derived fuel - often referred to as RDF. RDF is a form of fuel often exported to European incineration plants such as those found in Holland. The materials involved are extracted from either household refuse or commercial waste and often have to meet some form of specification. The story placed before us was the fact that as the winter was mild there was not the uptake of RDF from incineration plants on the continent and being a young company Shows did not have the connections in place to dispose of the RDF to energy plants for burning. On finding this was the case Shows came to an agreement with Trent Valley Recycling / Enviro Fuel Solutions who it was suggested had more connections. The picture being painted was that most of the material on site suddenly descended onto the site once these companies were involved. The general suggestion was that up to 5,000 tonnes was being stored on site and was the source of the fly issue. When residents questioned what was IN the RDF material and residents made reference to food waste it was made very clear such material was not present in the RDF on site. This raises the serious question as to what IS in the waste that formed the ideal breeding ground for a fly infestation of such epic proportions!

The site after the meeting shows baled waste stacked high in the yard
 
The picture as painted requires for us to suspend our concept of common sense because we are expected to believe that the Turton's as owners of the site which cost £850,000 and which carries a permit naming their company Shows Waste Management as responsible for the site somehow enabled up to 5,000 tonnes of waste to enter the site before the influx was stopped.  Now forgive me but if this is the reality then you really have to question the ability of the Turton's to run a successful business because surely as soon as you see such volumes being delivered to the site you would lock the gates!
 Having run Go4Greener for a number of years
 would they really make such a schoolboy / schoolgirl error?
But lets also look at the suggestion
 that Shows didn't have contacts for the burning of the RDF fuel
which they had been producing - which led to the start of the issue.
 If you didn't have customers for your RDF material would you have actually taken in the waste to make the RDF to start with? surely that would be a grave business risk? but hold on if one looks at the twitter feed of the Turton's older company Go 4 Greener as far back as November 2014 Go 4 Greener was posting about signing contracts with AEB Amsterdam for what they called sustainable disposal - AEB Amsterdam is a large waste incineration plant.

Go4Greener@go4greener 3 Nov 2014
Heading to later today to sign disposal contracts for 2015 with to ensure for our .

 


The two images below were taken on 15th June 2016 showing that while waste is being removed from the site much still remains
THE CLOCK IS TICKING

 
 


©SIMON BACON 2016
 

Wednesday 1 June 2016

Would you like flies with that?

After a number of years use and ownership by Transcycle - including acting as a hub for the city of Derby's brown bin recycling scheme where garden and food waste was bulked up for shipment to Vital Earth at Ashbourne for composting number 201 Slack Lane in the New Zealand / Mackworth area of the city was placed on the market.
The community have had issues with the site in the past as sited in an inner city area odour and fly issues were always likely to be on residents minds. Few likely noted the small article in the Derby Telegraph in the late summer of 2015 reporting that a new company was moving to Derby from Nottingham and was known as Go 4 Greener Waste Management. Taking on the 2.6 acre site the company owned by Wayne and Sam Turton was described as a business providing a range of recycling services.
Deeds logged with the land registry indicate the Turton's are owners of the site having paid £850,000 in July 2015 with the support of Barclays Bank.
While described in the media at the time as offering recycling services the companies website talks of zero waste to landfill - which to those in anti incineration circles means sending waste to incineration plants in either the UK or Europe. The Go 4 Greener twitter account in the past made reference to agreeing waste disposal contracts with AEB Amsterdam - a major incinerator of waste so it is clear that the company does not just handle specific recyclables but clearly has an interest in waste of a more residual nature - but then that needs to be shipped in some fashion to the likes of AEB Amsterdam. Tweets from 2014 show their engagement with AEB Amsterdam.

This then brings us to the issue that has unfolded in the streets and homes of the Mackworth community in recent weeks and months. While buzzing along under the radar for some time in recent weeks a serious fly outbreak has blighted the community bringing misery and distress to all around including major impacts on the Kingsway Retail Park leading to store closures.
Many pages of the complex story of what has happened and who is to blame have been printed or reported in recent weeks with fingers being pointed in different directions by different parties.
Without a copy of the waste permit it is not possible to identify what the site should and should not handle but what we do know is that the waste permit itself is registered not to Go 4 Greener but to another company owned by the Turton's known as Shows Waste Management which was launched in 2015. Waste permits are the life blood of a waste site - it is what allows the process to take place and these permits are issued by the Environment Agency.
The Turton's via the media appear to be suggesting that the issues relating to the flies on the site and the surrounding area are due to who they call Envirofuels / Trent Valley Recycling who it is claimed they leased part of the site to although the media report that the companies in question deny these claims.
Independent news reporter Derby News recently published an article on the waste saga shedding light on company ownership and the article can be found here
https://derbynews.org.uk/2016/05/27/mackworth-fly-infestation-convenient-confusion-over-whos-to-blame/

The facts with this situation are all pretty murky as to who is responsible for the waste in question but suggestions are circulating that issues with the site were raised at a residents meeting as far back as February 2016 and if this is the case potentially dates back beyond the involvement with these companies. This is backed up by the fact the Environment Agency issued an order against Shows Waste Management on March 10th 2016 which is before Trent Valley Recycling signed the agreement to use the site.
This has led to the site being filled with large bales on the site of what could potentially be refuse derived fuel - known as RDF - shown below.
 
As to what the bales actually contain and their intended destination if they are in fact RDF bales then they could have been produced by either one of the Turton's companies - noting their connections to incineration plants in Holland or that of fledgling company Enviro Fuels Solutions Ltd who appear to be the company the Turton's are referring to.
What is becoming clear is that neither Derby City Council or the Environment Agency are making Shows Waste Management deal with the waste in the time scale locals need to get the fly infestation under control. In recent days a representative of the Environment Agency on East Midlands Today appeared to be implying that in part the issue was linked to homes being built around the site but anyone who knows the area knows that many of the local homes date back decades and in some cases around a century.
The Go 4 Greener website makes some grand claims about the companies ethos so lets hope they stand by them in the coming weeks and deal with the situation that is playing our in the city of Derby.
 
 
There are many unanswered questions in this terrible situation but one that makes you stop and wonder is the following.
 
If you run a waste company and have spent £850,000 on a site and you have an active waste permit in your companies name placing you in the position of overall control and therefore liability why would you risk your business by allowing the serious situation to develop on the site which is now causing such local distress and directly placing your business and family life at risk?
If as suggested in the media there is 5,000 tonnes of waste that needs to be landfilled based just on the landfill tax rate of £84.40 the Turton's face a bill of over £400,000 for disposal of the waste mountain.
 
The latest twist to the saga is that the Environment Agency have started legal action against companies on the site in relation to the waste. How this will pan out is anyone's guess but things need to improve soon for the good of the local community.
 
©SIMON BACON 2016