In times where Councils are considering where savings or revenue are likely to come from to balance the budget, a commercial approach is often sought. Areas of interest include the establishment of a trade waste collection or analysis of the efficiency or potential for expansion of an existing trade waste service. This primarily relates to local authorities who provide in house waste collection services, although there should be nothing stopping local authorities developing trade waste collection services through their private sector contracts. If a Council don’t provide a trade waste service, they have to advise any commercial enquirer to use a registered waste carrier as per the Duty of Care Regulations. Also, local authorities are exempt from charging VAT for commercial waste collection services which gives them a commercial advantage over the private sector.

There will be an historic factor to trade waste decisions: whether the Council previously offered a trade waste service (but is now more a signposting service), or; whether there is an existing service which may be operating. Existing infrastructure, vehicles, opportunities for co-collection and materials offtake arrangements are also factors. But what are the areas of consideration for an effective trade waste service? There are many different configurations and approaches, and here are some examples:

• Promoting the social value of using local public sector services, thereby using revenue for direct local benefit (as opposed to private waste companies which may be multinationals)
• Offering customers a diverse range of collection containers (to suit circumstances)
• Assessment of the market for large containers, including:
  • Front end loader collection from 2 - 10 cu yard capacity
  • Offering skip containers from 8 - 16 cu yard capacity
  • Industrial rear end loader from 8 - 16 cu yard capacity
  • Roll-on-off large open top containers or closed compaction containers
  • Lease of static compactors for customers with low density / high volume waste
• Optimising the range of materials collected (mixed residual waste, commingled DMR, dual stream, separated recyclables, food waste)
• Offering waste audits to customers with the aim to move up the waste hierarchy
• Adoption of low emission vehicles
• Linking with Council dry and biodegradable wastes processing infrastructure, including utilising low carbon infrastructure (recycling, treatment, disposal) for managing collected trade waste
• Developing the trade waste services in partnership with other local authorities, and/or a Local Authority Trading Company
• Cross-selling of other Council services

Often the process begins with an assessment of the market for trade waste collection / management and a review of the opportunity in the context of the local authority circumstance. The Council may have inherent competitive advantage around infrastructure, systems and pricing that can foster an efficient service and expand market share. A business case is then made and, if approved, suitable procurement, marketing and mobilisation is undertaken.

Councils may partner to deliver more efficient and cost effective trade waste services, and link these with other Council initiatives for gaining value from the waste services (reuse, recycling and treatment). Offering and expanding trade waste services can provide a return to the public and businesses within their area in these inflationary times, even more so where there is spare capacity on the household collection rounds.

Frith Resource Management offer trade waste reviews, infrastructure reviews, market assessments, business cases and guidance on developing and delivering trade waste services. For more information contact paul@frithrm.com, see our website www.frithrm.com or call 01746 552423.