York and North Yorkshire Growth Hub - Bioeconomy Mapping Project
Multi-source data analysis and geospatial asset production for potential underutilised bioeconomy resources
The York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership area is one of the largest economies in England by land area, covering more than 10,700 square km and a population of around 1.14 million people across a predominantly rural area. The shared goal of the LEP and local authorities within the area is to become the country’s first carbon negative region, and to lead the way in creating a “Greener, Fairer, and Stronger” economy for all residents and visitors. Via the Growth Hub, (the LEP’s business support service for the region) a tranche of funding from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund became available for feasibility studies and pilot programmes to enable and encourage economic growth across the area.
Stakeholders
Client team 1, stakeholder pool 4
Size
c.40 professional days over six weeks
Project Type
Environmental data analysis and recommendation
Year
2023
The Growth Hub team were particularly interested in opportunities to change the way businesses operate and residents live, to reduce the production of greenhouse gases and the food, agricultural and other bio-based waste and surplus which is created by commercial and domestic activities. The Growth Hub needed a specialist research partner who understood the waste data systems and reporting taxonomies, could collate, combine and analyse large data sets, and understood the best opportunities for maximising bio-based waste resources. They commissioned a report and infographic that showed the untapped potential of bio-based waste and surplus in the entire region, as well as the existing landscape of waste transfer and processing operators.
We already had a really strong in-house capability for data discovery, analysis and reporting, and a good grasp of biorenewables opportunities and waste ‘valorisation’ - techniques for extracting higher economic value from waste streams - from the city-wide food recycling trials which we ran in 2019. However, we knew that to meet the breadth of this challenge, we’d need the support of a partner with deep knowledge of the full biorenewables context of the North Yorkshire region. We were supported by the Biorenewables Development Centre who had provided advice to us for the same 2019 trials, and in particular members of their Biovale Cluster team.
Together, we had all the specialist expertise needed to deliver a really great output to a limited budget - detailed knowledge of the data landscape for waste from sources such as the Environment Agency and Local Authority reporting sources, the ability to combine and analyse data in a consistent model for the region, infographic production services and geospatial mapping skills. We were able to obtain a complete picture through data of the bio-based waste types produced, transported and processed in the region, their total annual weights, which local authority areas they were produced in, and where they were processed. We also brought agricultural production data into the analysis, combined with harvest indices for yield and surplus data, data on food processing centres and catering businesses, and data on environment agency permit exemption activities related to relevant bio-based waste and materials handling.
Project Retrospective
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Bioeconomy resources are a key ingredient in the transition to a more sustainable, lower impact society that is far less reliant on fossil fuels and petrochemicals. Using waste resources more thoughtfully reduces the need to extract raw materials, and if opportunities can be found to utilise these resources locally, transport and handling impacts are also reduced.
Knowledge of where bio-based resources are, and in what quantities and under the control or governance of which organisations, is a key step in understanding how to transition to a sustainable bioeconomy. For local businesses, understanding alternative and potentially lower cost routes for disposing of ‘waste’ that has untapped economic value provides a financial co-benefit to responsible management of natural resources.
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The data around waste is quite specialised, and without pre-existing knowledge of the waste data taxonomies and reporting tools there would have been a real danger of misinterpreting the picture and over or understating the weights and types of bio-based waste moving through the region. However, only looking at ‘waste’ misses a significant proportion of data on where bio-based surplus materials may be found, so we had to think very creatively to uncover new sources of data. We created a logical model of bio-based waste and surplus early in the project to aid our thought process, which definitely helped uncover some areas we might have missed.
Combining the various datasets in a cohesive picture also took some careful consideration - for example, waste reported by local authorities is organised according to a particular categorisation whereas waste reported to the Environment Agency, which overlaps with this data, utilises a different categorisation system. We took time to ensure we were clear on what data showed what in infographic and geospatial assets.
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We were only commissioned to produce a single high level infographic, a written report and the base data, but in the end we produced all of this plus an additional full geospatial mapping pack that showed various different views of the data. We did this because we felt there were so many aspects to bio-based waste and surplus resources, agricultural activities, and other relevant factors that a single infographic would be overwhelmed. We didn’t want this additional detail to be lost in the raw data, as this was an initial information scanning project to support further discussion on what action the LEP and local authorities and business could take. It was hard to predict what information would be of most interest, so we presented as much as we could as clearly as we could.
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We had worked previously with the Biorenewables Development Centre on our 2019 food waste logistics trial, and really enjoyed the experience, so we were keen to team up again on this project. The work we did here at a regional level, and the process of collaboration with the BDC, put us in a really good position to co-bid for even more ambitious projects such as WWF’s Future Value of Seaweed (which we were second-placed for out of 16 bidders) and NERC’s Economic Appraisal of the UK Bioeconomy (which we won and are currently delivering).