It will be the first plant to serve Essex’s 1.3million people covered by Essex County Council. Valued at 1.3million, the contract is scheduled to run for a one-year period, although both the Council and Technowaste hope this can be extended to two-years in the future. Valued at 1.3million for this first year, the contract covers the disposal of domestic fridges, particularly those stored at civic amenity sites, in addition to those collected by the Council to be recycled.
Whilst Technowaste awaits its mandatory Environment Agency awarded waste disposal license and whilst it makes finalisations on any CFC removing equipment, the firm will sent fridges abroad for reprocessing. Fridges will be sent to RWE Grevenbroi in Germany and Coolrec in Holland for recycling until the opening of Technowaste’s Essex based facility in 2003.
Technowaste hopes the recycling facility will recycle 50,000 unwanted fridges for the year. The backlog of 30,000 stockpiled fridges will be send abroad for recycling, with Technowaste hoping to clear Essex’s fridge mountain by next year.
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Cabinet member for waste and recycling at Essex County Council, Councillor Kay Twitchen said she was pleased that Essex had now got a solution to the growing problem of unwanted fridges, and added that waiting for a more competitive market meant this could be done more economically.
“When the ODS regulations were first brought in, fridge reporcessors were charging around 26 per fridge unit – a ridiculous price. So we decided to store these fridges until more repocessors came on to the marketplace and so formed a more competitive market, allowing prices for reprocessing to go down to between 14-16,” she said.
Overall, the tender received “a lot of bidders and faced stiff competition” according to Councillor Twitchen, drawing at least 12 short-listed bidders, however, she said the information was commercially sensitive and could not provide any further details.
Part of the cost for handling these fridges will be met by the DEFRA’s 40million allocated towards the removal of the fridge-mountains in the UK, however, Councillor Twitchen said at this stage, she was unsure how much would be allocated.
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