Sussex Green Living From landfill to green fuel
Christmas has been and gone! Bins will fill with discarded packaging and gifts on festive rides from store to landfill. However, imagine the contents of every landfill site in the world converted into clean biofuel. A virtuous cycle of reuse, with a profit on top. That’s the dream of Philip Hall. All he needs is some starter money to scale up.
Philip’s idea is simple. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), the stuff collected by councils in recycling schemes, comes in three types - metals, plastics and biomass (all the paper and card left over after the first two are recycled).
Philip feeds it into processors, making the fibres susceptible to the production of industrial ethanol.
“Simply, if you give us one tonne of biomass, we will give you 300 litres of high-grade quality ethanol”, he says.
Ethanol is valuable in all sorts of industries, but the big opportunity is production of aviation fuel, offering the possibility of greener flying.
Philip, an experienced inventor with many patents to his name, believes his business model is robust.
“UK councils pay someone to take all the waste for processing. We take
waste and convert it into ethanol. Then fuel companies like BP collect it”, he explains.
Logistics will be crucial to the carbon balance.
“The key to this is little and often.
Having many small plants in strategic locations will enormously reduce the carbon footprints of deliveries because trucks would not have to drive far,” he says.
All this requires money.
“I spent two years approaching the City of London and I always got the same answer: they would fund the second plant if they saw the first was a success.” But he is not beaten – yet. “With my business partner John Brooke, we have put together the technology and finance to build a plant in Nottingham which we hope will be live by early spring 2022.
“I am not a political environmentalist. But I am doing this to leave the world a better place and yes, I do want to make some money, and I think all the rubbish we leave is a good place to start!”
Landfill is a desperate problem. Horsham has the threat of an incinerator hanging over it and our our landfill site is now filled above the brim.
It leaches toxins including acids and heavy metals. Plus, there is a deadly issue of methane which has 30 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.
This is clearly a business opportunity. We hope that someone in Britain will pick up Philip’s idea soon, to stop our future being wasted.