Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110

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Phs Group transforms customer waste into energy with new Viridor partnership

Washroom services Phs Group has announced a new partnership with Viridor which will divert customer waste from landfill into power generation.

As part of LifeCycle, Phs's sustainable waste management strategy, the new multi-million pound, five-year national contract will see Phs-managed non-recyclable waste transformed into energy at Viridor plants across the country.

Phs collects around 65,000 tonnes of hygiene waste from customers, including nappies and sanitary products. If disposed of in landfill, this waste can take more than 500 years to decompose. However, with this new partnership in place, Phs-managed waste will be treated at Viridor's energy recovery facilities, creating low carbon electricity which is sent to the National Grid. This will enhance Phs’s customers' sustainability objectives; not only diverting waste from landfill but using it to create energy.

Phs has set an objective to divert up to 95% of its customers' hygiene waste away from landfill.

"Organisations need to be questioning whether they should leave a burden of more than 500 years for every bag of washroom waste they dispose of,” argues David Taylor-Smith, CEO of Phs Group. “Through Phs's LifeCycle strategy, organisations will significantly reduce their impact upon the planet by landfill diversion and energy creation, transforming this burden into a legacy.

"Phs's company ethos is all about doing the right thing; LifeCycle is the right thing both for the environment and for our customers."

The new Viridor contract will give Phs national cover across its network of sites, significantly reducing the road mileage required to dispose of hygiene waste sustainably as well as offering the capacity that the market leading hygiene services business needs to ensure its customers' waste is catered for responsibly.

Viridor's ERF operational capacity is now 2.8 million tonnes of waste (including joint venture partners) and generating 233MW of electricity per annum. When Avonmouth ERF comes on stream in 2020, this will extend to 3.1 million tonnes and 267MW.

Paul Ringham, Viridor's commercial director, says: "Viridor's fleet of energy recovery facilities across the UK provided the sustainable waste management strategy Phs was looking for. A key part of Viridor's relationship with Phs is the emphasis on attaching a purpose to waste which cannot be recycled, putting this residual waste to work in a process which creates low carbon electricity and contributes to UK energy security. This is an ambition shared by Phs which, like Viridor, views all waste as a resource and not rubbish."

www.phs.co.uk / www.viridor.co.uk

9th January 2020