Multi-million pound West Devon contract out to tender

The contract is out to tender until February 13 in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) and covers the collection of domestic residual waste, dry recyclables, garden, food and clinical waste.

It also involves servicing the council's 22 recycling bank sites, as well as street cleansing and the cleaning of public conveniences.

The deal will replace the current arrangement the council has with Spanish-owned waste management company, Focsa, which has run since 2001 and ends later this year.

Speaking to letsrecycle.com today (January 13) about the contract, West Devon's environmental services manager, Jill Skelton outlined the council's aims in letting the award.

“We want to continue with high quality, good value services for residents and to reduce waste going to landfill,” she explained.

“We are a very, very large rural authority, so therefore collection costs are quite high, so we wanted to review and see what savings we can get out of transport costs,” she added.

In 2007/08, the council achieved a 38.85% household recycling and composting rate.

West Devon currently sends its residual waste to Viridor's landfill site at Heathfield, in South Devon, while recyclables are currently collected source-separated, and then bulked up at the council's recycling centre near Tavistock, from where they are marketed directly to reprocessors.

The council is expecting between four and 10 companies to respond to the tender for the deal, which is expected to run for seven years, with the option to be extended to 14 years.

It aims to award the contract in late 2009, with the aim of starting its new arrangements in April 2010.

Initiatives

Over the past year the council has introduced a number of initiatives to help improve its recycling rate. In June last year its food waste collection trial for Tavistock was extended to 2,500 more homes in the Okehamptom area. The original Tavistock food waste collections, which were funded by WRAP, saw 380 tonnes of food waste collected between May 2007 and May 2008 with the material going to the Devon-based Holsworthy Biogas anaerobic digestion facility.

The council also extended its kerbside collection scheme for card and paper last May, as part of Recycle Week's ‘Just one more thing' scheme, and as a result it now accepts window and sticky envelopes as part of its card collections.

And, April 2008 saw the council praise its residents for being “committed recyclers”. A survey showed that 81% of its householders were committed recyclers compared to a national average of 57%.

Andrew Barron, the council's Recycling Education Officer, said: “Our residents really appreciate the beautiful area they live in and will do whatever they can to protect it along with the wider environment. We are privileged to have such enthusiastic recyclers.”