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Worms chew through 40 tonnes of Clays waste
Clays, the book printing division of St Ives, has diverted 40 tonnes of paper dust from going to landfill each year by sending one of its largest bi-products to a worm farm in Norfolk.
The environmental initiative has been put in place at the Bungay operation as part of a push to secure the ISO 14001 environmental standard by the end of the year.
The paper dust collection process begins once the paper handling and printing process is complete. The remaining paper dust is collated throughout the Clays facility as the site is cleaned.
The dust is then incinerated in order to burn away the elements that cannot be recycled and Clays' waste management company, ORM North Norfolk, takes the resulting paper ash away.
The paper ash is collected every four to five weeks and then mixed into the worm cast, which houses the soil and compost where the worms live.
Clays commodity buyer David Steward said "We are delighted to introduce this initiative at Clays.
"Not only is it a great fit for our business, and value added ethos, but we believe that it is further demonstration of our responsibility to the environment, and our push to achieve ISO 14001 accreditation by the end of 2008," he added.
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Comments
Mick Hart - 04 April 2008
Perhaps I'm missing something, but since when has either burning waste, or rearing animals (Worms?), been of environmental benefit? Neither fits in with my understanding of carbon neutrality!
Lena Johansson - 04 April 2008
The environmental benefit/impact of burning waste would depend on how the material was incinerated - was the resulting heat converted to usable energy and was the incinerator emissions controlled? Incinerators have been used in Scandinavia for a long time and the technology is clean enough for it to be a comparatively good way of dealing with mounting piles of rubbish. Diverting 40 tonnes of material out of landfill is a good thing as it prevents it from producing methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas emitted when materials decompose in anaerobic conditions.
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