2023-07-21 10:00:00
Until recently, mattresses were chopped up and burned. Now Renewi recycles a million mattresses a year. For example, much more waste can be saved from incineration, says CEO Otto de Bont.
Given the gigantic mountain of waste that arrives at Renewi every year, 11 billion kilos, there is something striking about the waste processing company. “We don’t have our own incinerators,” says Otto de Bont. Renewi wants to extract as many raw materials as possible from waste and its own incineration plant could stand in the way of that mission, says the CEO when the sustainability report is published.
Other large waste companies, such as Veolia, Suez, PreZero and Remondis, do have their waste-to-energy plants. These companies therefore also need waste to use that capacity. This is different for Renewi, for incineration the waste must be taken to another party and therefore paid.
“That puts us in a unique position,” says De Bont. “We have a financial incentive to burn as little as possible. We are constantly looking at which material we can save by recycling more.” And that is perhaps half of what is currently burned in the Netherlands, he explains later.
Collaboration with Ikea
Burning a ton of waste costs more than 100 euros. “If we can collect, clean and process waste into a secondary raw material for less than 100 euros, then that is profitable. Also because the recycled material can generate money. It also saves society the use of new raw materials and the necessary CO2 emissions.
As an example, De Bont refers to a collaboration between Renewi and Ikea furniture store that was launched in the Netherlands. “Until two years ago, old mattresses were chopped up and sent for incineration. Now we manage to recycle a million mattresses per year.” The different materials are separated in an automated process and used as raw materials for new PU foam, textiles and metal parts. At the moment, mattress recycling is cost-effective and profitability is expected to increase, says De Bont.
Contributing to the preservation of this world
Renewi is a listed company and De Bont therefore has to deal with shareholders who are looking for returns and who pay attention to turnover – last financial year it amounted to 1.9 billion euros. “However, at this company you can look beyond the financial aspect and contribute to making society more sustainable,” says De Bont. That insight led him to start working there six years ago.
Until then, De Bont had been a senior manager at the international companies General Electric and United Technologies. He sold plastics, silicones, air conditioners and elevators worldwide. “By the age of 50 I began to wonder, like many of my peers, whether I am contributing enough to the preservation of this world.” When the Van Gansewinkel Groep and the British waste company Shanks merged into Renewi in 2017, he decided to switch to this new company as director for the Netherlands. Two years later he became CEO.
Renewi is active in the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, France and Portugal. It mainly processes industrial waste, including from construction, chemicals, catering or from greenhouses, although private individuals who do odd jobs can also have a Renewi container placed in front of their house.
Pick up food scraps from supermarkets
Recycling is the keyword. Of the 11 million tons of waste that came in last year, 7 million tons were processed into secondary materials. That amounts to 63 percent, a figure that should increase in the coming years. “This makes Renewi a world leader in the field of recycling and the production of secondary raw materials,” says De Bont.
Of those 7 million tons, the largest part concerns mineral raw materials (2.6 million tons), ie sand or gravel. Renewi also converts polluted petrochemical wastewater into clean water – clean enough for further processing by a water company. Glass from the environmental stations of the municipalities is made suitable for reuse by the glass industry in the Renewi factories. Renewi also processes wood, paper, metals, organic material and electronics in decreasing quantities.
What happens to the four million tons that cannot be recycled? Renewi makes biofuels from a quarter of that. “In Amsterdam, for example, we collect food waste from Jumbo and Albert Heijn supermarkets. For Shell, we turn it into bio-LNG for trucks, among other things.”
Many European countries dump bio-waste and that is bad for the climate
It is even better to reduce that biological waste stream. Supermarkets are also working on this, says De Bont. “But as long as this waste is there, this is a good solution. In other countries, such as England, France, Southern and Eastern Europe, it is often still dumped on a landfill. This releases methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas than CO2, straight into the air. For the climate, that is much worse than extracting biogas.”
Half of the waste that remains is incinerated to generate energy. “To some extent, this happens in the cement industry. But think especially of the large waste factories of AEB in Amsterdam and AVR in Rotterdam, which generate energy from waste.” The rest, especially hazardous chemical waste, is incinerated without generating energy.
Waste companies with an incinerator call the energy they generate sustainable. Because they prevent the use of fossil fuels, says the Dutch Waste Management Association. What does De Bont think of that?
“In my opinion, incinerating waste scores slightly better than burning wood for energy generation. Because you have to get rid of the residual waste anyway. But we much prefer to get everything that can be recycled from that incinerator. Technically there are increasingly better possibilities to recycle the streams that go to waste incineration. We need to make better use of it.”
You could call it a problem that Dutch combustion plants generate electricity and heat for households. You can’t just stop doing that. If there is not enough waste available, it is even imported, for example from Italy.
Phase out, just like the coal-fired power plants
How to get rid of such a system? De Bont: “As a society, we are working hard to build up even more renewable energy sources. In that sense, I see residual waste as a transition fuel. We will still need it in the coming years. But in the long run less and less, because we can recycle more and better.”
The real problem is that the Netherlands has too much capacity for waste incineration, namely 8 million tons, he says. “We don’t need that much. The question is how you are going to reduce that capacity. We see a role for the government in this, just as with the end of coal-fired power stations.”
Because the government also wants the Netherlands to reuse more raw materials, waste incineration is becoming increasingly expensive. The tax for incinerators has gone up from 13 euros per ton in 2018 to 35 euros per ton this year. In addition, waste incinerators have been included in the European Union’s emissions trading system since this year. They therefore increasingly have to pay for their CO2 emissions.
“Looking at this trajectory, we expect that incineration will be twice as expensive in 2030 as it is now,” says De Bont. He thinks this is favorable for Renewi. “Because then we will have more room to recycle waste streams that are not yet economically viable.”
Flanders is leading the way
Renewi is actually not going fast enough yet. Flanders is ahead of the Netherlands, says De Bont. There it is forbidden to burn waste that is suitable for recycling. “A piece of plastic or wood that is larger than a certain size may no longer be burned. With a ban like that, things go a lot faster.”
Renewi is working on two new sorting plants for residual industrial waste in Belgium, one of which is already running. “With this we can remove half of the waste for recycling.” At the waste-to-energy plant AEB in Amsterdam, for example, this is only 12 percent, and the rest is incinerated.
In the Netherlands, plastic is largely fished out of the waste stream. The Packaging Waste Fund arranges this on behalf of the producers. De Bont: “The problem is that the Waste Fund is not interested in wood or many other raw materials. They only want to remove the plastic, because the producers have to recycle it from the government.”
You see that various parties are somewhat in each other’s way, says Bont. “Do it right the first time and avoid half solutions. The government must be a guiding factor in this.”
De Bont emphasizes the importance of the government several times. “Our industry is largely shaped by laws and taxes. They largely determine the steps we take.
“Look at the collection of waste. We can do that with electric trucks, but that costs two and a half times as much as with a diesel. When we ask customers, Gee, we have this clean option, are you willing to pay for it? Then 99 percent answer no. If there are rules that prevent you from entering the city center with diesel vehicles from 2025, then they have to be. Customers pay a little extra, but then it’s solved.”
Renewi believes that there should also be a mandatory percentage for the use of recyclate in new products. The outgoing cabinet already had those plans. “The demand for recyclate is stabilizing and must continue to grow. In the long run, it’s pretty unpredictable what’s going to happen in that market. We all say that there will be a scarcity of materials, that prices will increase considerably. Well, so far we see little of that happening,” says De Bont.
Refrigerators and Playmobil made from recycled plastic
In the meantime, Renewi focuses on ‘creating value’. “If we significantly improve the quality of plastic, for example, we can charge twice or three times as much for it.” That works fine. “The incoming stream of waste is given a higher quality by prior separation at the customers. This helps us to find a higher-quality destination for the material.
“Previously, roadside posts were made from old plastic, downcycling that’s called. But now our subsidiary Coolrec, together with Electrolux, makes new refrigerators from old refrigerators. The plastic is recycled. Another example is that Playmobil has a special line with toys made from our plastic. This is how we try to get the market moving with ambitious parties.”
Read also:
The long journey through Europe of a discarded pack of custard
What happens to an empty custard pack that has been thrown away? Will it get a second life or will it end up in the incinerator?
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