DCC Environmental collects and processes a broad range of non-hazardous and hazardous waste.
Its market leading Scottish business owns one of the most comprehensive waste infrastructures in Scotland, which includes material recycling facilities across the central belt of Scotland. These facilities seek to divert as much waste as possible away from landfill through the extraction of valuable commodities from waste streams which are sold to paper mills, steel mills and plastic and glass reprocessors as raw materials. Wood chip is also produced from waste wood which can be used by either the panel board or biomass industries or for animal bedding, arena surfacing and ground cover. Finally, construction aggregate is produced from waste demolition material which can be used as a substitute for virgin quarry aggregate.
DCC Environmental owns the largest material recycling facility in the East Midlands at Nottingham. In addition to providing a similar range of services to that offered by the Scottish facilities, this facility produces refuse derived fuel, a substitute to fossil fuels utilised by the cement industry. In addition, DCC Environmental operates two material recycling facilities in Leicester.
At its three hazardous facilities in Scotland and the North East of England, DCC Environmental provides innovative solutions to customers for a broad range of hazardous waste. DCC Environmental also incorporates a national waste oil and hazardous waste collection, processing and recycling business, Oakwood Fuels. Oakwood collects waste lubricant oil and hazardous waste from businesses in a variety of sectors (the largest of which is the automotive services sector) and converts the waste oil to processed fuel oil, which is sold to customers for use in a variety of applications including road surfacing operations, aggregate drying, industrial and agricultural drying, power stations, large boilers and furnaces.
Overall, the British business handles 1.5 million tonnes of material, the majority of which is collected by its own fleet of approximately 260 vehicles, and approximately 70% of all waste volumes are diverted from landfill.
The UK Government has valued the British waste management market at Stg£7.5 billion. The six largest British waste management companies account for approximately 50% of this market but below this level the market is relatively fragmented.
The British business, with its comprehensive non-hazardous recycling infrastructure (the business does not operate any active waste landfill sites), is ideally positioned to benefit from society’s drive to reduce waste and to conserve natural resources. Strong legislative backing is being provided to support the shift to resource recovery from waste products, the most significant of which is the commitment by the UK Government to increase landfill tax to Stg£80 per tonne by April 2014. Other examples of the movement towards a more efficient management of scarce resources was the publication by the UK Government in June 2011 of its Waste Review which includes plans to consult on material-specific landfill bans and the Scottish Government’s own plans for a ‘Zero Waste’ Scotland, which aims to reach a 70% recycling rate (currently circa 40%) for all waste by 2025.