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The ten-year row between the cement and incineration industries over the use of hazardous wastes as cement kiln fuel has re-ignited amid proposals to relax controls. Cement manufacturers anticipate a further 40% growth in use of secondary liquid fuel (SLF), alongside combustion of waste packaging, tyres, oil and meat and bone meal on a massive scale.

 

The row resurfaced following the Agency's recent consultation on changes to its substitute fuels protocol (ENDS Report 351, pp 43-44 ). The revised protocol will allow the burning of wastes with a low calorific value and wastes from the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, biocides and explosives. It also lessens monitoring and public consultation requirements.

On 28 May, Cleanaway, operator of the Ellesmere Port hazardous waste incinerator, sent letters to MPs and councillors in areas with cement kilns warning them of the Agency's plans. The letter bluntly states the changes will lead to "environmental standards being lowered" while local residents will have "NO SAY" in what materials are to be burnt. Friends of the Earth sent similar letters.

Kilns will start burning low-calorific value wastes - even contaminated soils - under the revised protocol, leading to increased emissions of metals, sulphur and dust, according to Gill Weeks, Cleanaway's regulatory affairs director. Kilns, she says, "are not the best environmental option" for such wastes.

The British Cement Association countered Cleanaway's claims with a press release stating that cement kilns have to comply with the EU waste incineration Directive so cannot be classed as environmentally unsound, and that local communities would be consulted about any change to the fuel mix.

It accused Cleanaway and FoE of "scaremongering" and undertaking "a campaign of misinformation".

Nonetheless, the cement industry is preparing for rapid growth under the revised protocol - and even FoE seems resigned to change. Anna Watson, FoE's waste and resources campaigner, says that "realistically" the proposals will go ahead.

SRM, part of the Heidelberg Cement group, now dominates Britain's SLF market. It supplies some 110,000 tonnes per annum to Castle Cement and Lafarge. Its sole competitor, Onyx, supplies around 30,000 tonnes to Rugby Cement's plants in South Ferriby and Barrington.

Heidelberg, the parent company of Castle Cement, took its first steps into the UK waste management sector in 1999 when it bought both Solrec and Chemical Manufacturing and Refining - two leading SLF suppliers (ENDS Report 296, pp 17-18 ).

The merged business - named SRM - went on to acquire Safety-Kleen's SLF supply contracts last year, thereby providing it with access to Lafarge's kilns as well as Castle's. Safety-Kleen, which once held some 40% of the SLF market, had found margins to be increasingly tight after Rugby Cement agreed a new supply contract with Onyx.

Castle burnt around 75,000 tonnes at its Ketton and Ribblesdale kilns last year, while Lafarge burnt some 20,000 at Dunbar (see table). Shanks, which once supplied Dunbar through its Lothian Chemicals subsidiary, is no longer a player in the market.

The cement industry's use of SLF dwarfs the amount taken by incineration firms. Around 64,000 tonnes of hazardous waste go to Ellesmere Port, and up to 35,000 tonnes to Shanks' Fawley incinerator. Shanks blamed competition with cement kilns as a factor behind the closure of its Pontypool incinerator in 2002 (ENDS Report 324, pp 14-15 ).

Cement firms expect SLF use to grow by 40% to some 200,000 tonnes per annum by 2007. The industry says the market will expand as much as a result of restrictions under the EU landfill Directive as changes to the substitute fuels protocol.

Speaking on behalf of the BCA, Dick Boarder, fuels manager at Castle Cement, said that 200,000 tonnes would be "an absolute limit" due to the need to maintain cement quality.

Nigel Williams, liquid fuels manager at Onyx, said: "We're going to look to incorporate as wide a range of materials as possible, and we'd welcome wastes from pharmaceutical and pesticide manufacture provided we're not compromised under the [Control of Major Accident Hazards regulations]."

Underlining the industry's appetite to increase SLF combustion, Lafarge gained permission for a six-month trial burn at its Westbury kiln in Wiltshire in June. SRM, meanwhile, has invested £1 million at its Heysham site so it can start processing drummed waste - such as solidified tars and polymerised resins - into SLF. SRM also plans to start producing SLF from its Knottingley plant in the near future, according to company director John Doyle.

Both Cleanaway and Shanks feel such growth will endanger their incinerators. "As we see it, the whole hazardous waste merchant incineration sector will be undermined," said Cynon Edwards, Shanks' spokesman, although he will not say whether Fawley or Ellesmere might have to close.

"That's an overstatement," according to Nigel Williams of Onyx. "Both incinerators are at full capacity and the change in the substitute fuels protocol isn't going to have a big effect. And anyway, the cement industry is looking at different fuels."

On top of the SLF market, the BCA is predicting significant growth in the use of other fuels in kilns as it attempts to get substitute fuel use to the 80% it is in some continental plants. It estimates the following will be being burnt by 2007: