FIRE STORAGE 


A CASE OF GETTING YOUR ACT TOGETHER


Peter Butt is fighting one of the most important battles of his career and at stake is the future of an important part of the UK’s recycling sector. In his role as Executive Director of the Wood Recycling Association (WRA), Peter believes that fire storage is perhaps the biggest issue the sector has faced in the past 20 years.


In this exclusive interview with Finning News, Peter describes how recyclers are “getting their act together” to protect their industry, which is still in its relative infancy.


Peter: “Waste fires make for lurid headlines and great pictures and we need to do all that we sensibly can to reduce their frequency and minimise their impact. Every time a waste fire hits the news, the potential for a regulatory backlash grows all the greater. This is what we are now seeing, in the form of an Environment Agency backed draft guidance document on fire storage.


“With an estimated 5 million tonnes of post-consumer wood a year available for recycling, the industry has grown from nothing to its present level in less than 25 years. We currently recycle almost 3 million tonnes a year for productive use - panel-board production, animal bedding, a variety of landscaping applications, and biomass fuel. If it we didn’t recycle it, it would most likely end up in landfill or be disposed of illegally. So our sector makes a significant - and growing - contribution to both the economy and the environment.”

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