David Alexander, head of waste management, for Kent County Council, recently visited Australia with other top officials and councillors to see the combined recycling and gasification plant or SWERF at Wollongong. A SWERF to be provided in Kent by Brett Waste Management and Brightstar Environmental will form a key part of the county's long-term waste management plan.
Mr Alexander said that he was very impressed with the plant and was sure that the council had made the right decision by awarding a contract to Bretts/Brightstar. He said: “We looked at the plant in Wollongong and Brightstar's manufacturing plants in Brisbane and were very impressed with them. We went out there to have a look at the plant and talk to the people who are developing it and we came away convinced that we have done the right thing in deciding to award them a contract. It will work in Kent.”
But the trip was not without incident, Mr Alexander came within six inches of treading on a venomous snake and told letsrecycle.com: “If I had been bitten I am told it would have been a helicopter job.”
The council is now working with Brett Waste Management and Brightstar to “fine tune” the contract. The SWERF will be built at the Shelford landfill site near Canterbury and will have an initial capacity of 110,000 tonnes a year, with a final capacity likely to be 165,000 tonnes. The SWERF should be operating by 2004 although it is subject to planning and the IPPC process and the contract will provide the opportunity to increase the amount of material processed in response to changing government targets.
Allington earthworks
Mr Alexander also explained how the Waste Recycling Group (WRG) has started advanced earthworks on the Allington material recovery and fluidised bed energy from waste plant, Kent's other major waste management project. The plant will take up to 350,000 tonnes of household waste a year over the next 25 years and is expected to be commissioned in late 2004.
While the council's plans for diverting waste from landfill centre on an energy from waste plant and a solid waste and energy recycling facility, Mr Alexander explained how they are also investing in their civic amenity sites.
Civic amenity sites in the county have this year averaged a recycling rate of 55% and the site at Tovil near Maidstone averages more than 70%. The increases have resulted from contractual changes which have seen site staff given financial incentives to increase recycling as well as an increase in public participation.
Mr Alexander said: “Perhaps we are starting to get the message across. The recycling rates at our sites have gone up from less than 30% three years ago to 55% this year. We have got one of the most heavily used civic amenity site networks in the country with four million site visits a year.”
But Mr Alexander made it clear that Kent was “not sitting on its laurels” and has more than 1 million to spend on improving the sites. Kent is one of seven counties that has agreed to meet stretched recycling targets of 28% by 2003/04 and in doing so has received funding from the Public Service Agreements (PSA). The council is now embarking on a face-lift of all its 18 civic amenity sites which will see all the sites being re-signed along with other user-friendly improvements.
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