With the right approach, community odour problems can be avoided, writes Robin Ormerod of EnviroSuite.
It’s not a particularly pleasant topic, but effective odour management is vital for many businesses in the food and beverage sector. Ensuring operations don’t create disgruntled neighbours or attract the ire of regulatory bodies must become a core part of day-to-day activity.
For businesses in the sector, there are a range of ways odours might be generated and released into the air, including from some types of raw materials, particularly if they are not well contained; odours from processes such as cooking and drying that are vented into the atmosphere or escape due to incomplete containment; and odours from waste sources such as wastewater ponds that contain high levels of organic material.
The source of the issue
The sector’s odour management challenges begin at the first stage in the production chain. Meat, egg and dairy production often involves intensive livestock production which has enormous potential for odour problems, especially if operations are close to neighbours.
In such situations, there tends to be high concentrations of animal waste that is intrinsically odorous and can become anaerobic – and more unpleasant – if poorly managed.
Indeed, the wide variety of downstream food processing activities opens up other possibilities for odours to be generated, and often these activities are in urban areas with large communities nearby.
Odours become particularly problematic when they impinge on wider neighbouring communities. To help prevent this, there are state guidelines and legal measures that aim to protect communities from odour nuisance. It should be noted that, in this context, the word ‘nuisance’ has a specific meaning in the law. It is defined as something that causes an unreasonable impact on someone’s enjoyment of their property, and is caused by repeated, annoying events.
The guidelines mostly focus on the planning stage of a development and are designed to ensure a new facility is far enough from residents and sufficiently well-designed so that nuisance should not occur.
For existing industry, nuisance can occur when local communities expand into what was once buffer space around a facility. In these cases, careful management of odour is even more critical.
