Zero waste to Landfill

11 August 2022

Fambridge Yacht Haven contracts a new waste collection service that avoids generating landfill

Fambridge Yacht Haven, on the River Crouch in Essex, an area prized for its scenic beauty and a favourite spot for ornithologists, has just improved its waste management protocol. Situated within or adjacent to sensitive ecological (SPA, Ramsar and SSSI) areas, they are particularly aware of how they manage their two sites.

Their new green skips can take ALL site-produced mixed waste. Green Recycling will then separate the waste at their plant in Maldon. Recyclable materials will be separated and recycled, with non-recyclable items pelletised and sold as fuel to power plants. As a result, none of the waste produced on-site at Fambridge Yacht Haven will end up in landfill.

Separate bins are still provided for scrap metal, waste oil and batteries, and the marina offers information on how to safely dispose of flares.

Manager Danyal Adams relayed his experience:

We used to separate our waste into general waste, cardboard / paper, plastics, timber, & metals.  The plastics and cardboard / paper were bailed separately and once in bailed form, even generated a return.  General waste was compacted within a large dedicated compactor skip and was emptied / exchanged on request, the cost of which depended on the weight of the contents.

The process was fairly labour intensive with Mondays & Fridays corresponding to waste day for a staff member on a rota basis.  At the beginning the benefits both to us & the environment far outweighed the effort.  All waste produced at Fambridge Yacht Haven was being well-managed, responsibly recycled, and consequently we maintained a super clean site. Our rota meant that we could manage bin capacity as well as bin costs by being able to separate plastics / cardboard and metals from the general waste in order to keep general waste weight/volume to a minimum.  To further reduce our costs, we were able to offset our waste collection costs with the income from the sale of scrap metal. Having been a little closer to Green Recycling, we could have further offset costs with the sale of plastic & cardboard / paper bails – but in our case, this would have been a 20mile round trip and so we simply opted for the bails to be collected for recycling FOC.

Everything was going well for several years, we even won a Green Blue award, but sadly our bailing machines became old and started to cost considerably more to maintain each year.  The compactors were starting to fail and when out of action, waste quickly started to build, looked unsightly and so the method of managing our own waste became unviable.

Fortunately, Green Recycling were extremely helpful and recently upgraded to an automated and manual waste separation system at their premises in Maldon, Essex. They are able to provide smart bins to store all waste generated on site, before separating the contents for us.  The benefits are that we can still proudly state that none of our waste will go to landfill, we are saving on staff hours, our two sites within North Fambridge are very clean with ample waste disposal facilities.  Further, our costs have reduced substantially and in the current economy, to be able to make any cost saving is a very rare thing!

Many thanks to Danyal and the Yacht Havens team for sharing this story. This is an inspiring example of responsible waste management and a great example to follow for other TransEurope members.