The assessment of a Carbon footprint is a relatively new science, but one at the core of Bedminster’s business. To model the Bedminster BioEnergy process, specialist software has been employed together with data from a broad range of UK, EU and US environmental databases.

The Bedminster facility is considered to process a zero environmental value material in municipal solid waste. Its objective is to add environmental value to this material by recovering part and sending other materials for recycling such as scrap steel, aluminium and other non-ferrous metals. By recycling these materials, the greater carbon footprint of their manufacture from virgin raw material can be calculated and offset. In addition, the diversion from landfill of pyrolysed BioMass minimises greenhouse gas emissions and this significantly enhances carbon footprint performance. Similarly the electricity exported from the facility will be sold and will therefore offset CO2 generation at a typical power station, thus saving more fossil fuels.

A relative contrast can be made by comparing the proposed solution to a situation where the same tonnage of waste is landfilled. In this situation nothing is recovered and in the worst case the resulting landfill gas is either flared, leaks to atmosphere, or a proportion is captured to power gas engines and generate electricity.

The model shows that for every 100,000t processed in the Bedminster BioEnergy plant.

• almost 45,000t of CO2 is saved and prevented from entering the atmosphere.
• if a similar tonnage was sent to landfill then over 55,000t of CO2 would be released to the atmosphere.
• The overall improvement in performance is equivalent to a saving of 100,000t of CO2 which is equivalent to taking more than 35,000 cars off the road!