Hills Waste Solutions take part in WRAP trial

Wiltshire-based waste-management firm chosen to undertake wood waste trials

HILLS Waste Solutions were one of five companies across England selected by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to undertake new trials on economically viable ways to collect wood waste. The main focus of the trial had been on wood waste which is currently not collected as part of mainstream wood recycling.

Following the publication of WRAP’s Wood Waste Collection Hub Feasibility Studies, the trial focused on the potential offered by four target areas identified in WRAP’s Business Case for Wood Waste Collection Hubs (WWCHs) report of August 2012 as being:

• Wood recovery in composting.
• Local authority civic amenity recycling centres or household waste recycling centres (HWRCs).
• Collection clusters for SME wood businesses.
• Reverse logistics for wood sector businesses.

Hills had trialled the feasibility of collecting wood waste from construction trades waste at their Lower Compton HWRC site in Calne. Members of the local building trader were encouraged to bring their wood and non-hazardous construction waste to the site where they were charged a nominal fee for disposal.

A Hill spokesman said: ‘We believe that this will work best by offering small builders a complete service for all of their waste rather than trying to get them to segregate the wood element – hence the design of the trial. We have undertaken the separation of wood ourselves and fed the information back to WRAP.’

The trial results will assist WRAP to determine how the development of waste wood collection and the supply chain can be supported with the aim of reducing the amount of waste wood sent to landfill.