Our friends from Ad Green (http://www.adgreen-apa.net/) came to visit and this is what they had to say 
about what they saw:
Recycling doesn’t actually happen, does it? Oh yes, it does!  
It all goes in the landfill in the end, right? Oh no, it doesn’t! 
In order to help dispel these myths, Daisy and I headed to the deepest darkest Deptford at the 
beginning of the year to check out the HQ of our latest green recommendation: 
recycling and waste company, Quantum Waste. 
 
Having been to a few MRFs before (that’s a ‘materials recovery facility’ to you and me), I was expecting 
to find a sprawling, smelly, depressingly full-of-all-kinds-of-crap open warehouse with miles of sorting 
conveyor belts, and a group of seagulls circling overhead. However, as we approached, we realised we 
were headed to a railway arch. Eh?
 
Spanish-born Javier Rojo, who set up Quantum Waste around 4 years ago after working at Climate 
Change Capital and Lehman Brothers, met us at the entrance to the arch, having just hopped off his 
bike, and took us inside. It’s compact but neat, and everything has its place. Most importantly there’s 
practically no smell. Compost bins at the back, plastic compactors on the left, and sorting tables and 
cardboard balers on the right. ‘We deal with more than 1,000 bags a day in here which we ask 
customers to separate into food waste and everything else’, Javier tells us. Each bag is sorted by 
hand, by the drivers who have collected it. This may sound like a laborious process, but as Javier says, 
‘the most sophisticated sorters are humans, not machines.’ The guys here get through roughly 12 bags 
an hour, and sort into aluminium, steel, cardboard, paper, clear PET plastic, frosted HDPE plastic 
(such as milk cartons), Plastic film, cooking oil, glass and food waste & garden waste for compost.
      
We check out the compost bin, where food and other compostable matter sit for around 4 weeks, 
before going to cure in a greenhouse for a further 4. It’s generating some impressive heat on this cold 
January day, as the enzymes break down the food waste, making some of the best compost money can 
buy (at only £1.50 a bag!). Javier takes a minute to show us the results: egg shells, and bones, still 
roughly visible but amazing for feeding your garden. However, he also comes across an unwelcome 
sight – a rogue fruit sticker, his arch nemesis in compost making. ‘We sieve the compost before 
bagging to try and get them, but the odd one slips through the net’, he says. They also work with food
waste charity FareShare, ‘sometimes they just have too much food, and can’t distribute it before it’s 
past its best. This way something positive still comes from those donations.
   
And what happens to the recyclable materials? Once they have enough of any one type, they’re sold 
at market rates, to those using the raw materials to make new products. Prices range from around £70 
for a tonne of cardboard, to roughly £150 for a tonne of plastic milk bottles. Around 70% of the plastic
actually ends up in China. The funds from these sales plus the fees charged to customers like us for 
collection are how Quantum Waste keep going. They are well known in their local area, serving a lot of 
the nearby businesses such as Goldsmiths University and Pop Brixton, and those in neighbouring 
arches, who drop off their waste by hand. Occasionally they also pull out some gems: the whole 
team of driver-sorters is dressed in high vis and steel toe cap boots that turned up in a collection 
from Network Rail.
 
For these guys, ‘rubbish’ is any item too soiled (with food) to be recycled – sale prices are affected if 
the materials aren’t clean enough. These items are taken to an energy recovery facility. Essentially this 
means the waste is burned and energy generated through the combustion process is captured and 
sold back to the energy grid. Technically this is what’s called ‘zero waste’ as nothing Quantum Waste 
collects is going to landfill. However, he warns us to be wary when looking at other waste companies' 
claims: ‘As we’ve explained, zero to landfill doesn’t mean that everything is being recycled, and larger 
facilities with sorting machines will reject large quantities of bags which are too mixed up. Those bags 
are burned, which although diverting from landfills, is not the best solution. The way we work means 
we can guarantee around 90% of the materials we collect are recycled or composted, and only a small 
amount goes to energy recovery.’ A lot of this rubbish from larger facilities is actually sent to Europe 
to be incinerated, leaving Javier wondering what might happen once Brexit kicks in. Will we start 
dealing with it better once it’s all stuck in our own backyard?
 
Having recently developed their online booking system (www.quantumwaste.com/app), Quantum 
Waste is keen for us to start adopting it to book in collections from our shoots. It’s easy to use, giving 
you an estimated collection cost, and even sends you an alert once the rubbish has been collected, 
along with a payment link for PayPal. It is better waking up to that than an email from an angry 
neighbour at your location because some fox has been through your uncollected waste and scattered a 
load of leftover apple crumble and custard over their front lawn. You can get more details about using 
the app over on our ‘Waste Management on Set’ page.
 
In the future QW aims to have several sorting facilities around London, minimising driving time (and 
emissions) getting around all of their customers, including our shoots. They’re also looking into 
electric vehicles to reduce emissions further, as well as developing a city farm project on the edge of 
London near the M-25 in conjunction with the local council and community. Using Quantum Waste 
is a great way to cost effectively recycle and compost waste, and long may their great work continue!