Members of Bradford metropolitan district council’s environment and waste management overview and scrutiny committee will meet on September 2 to discuss a report on alternative treatment options for recycling and refuse in the city.
The council – which currently exports its recyclables to merchant reprocessors and residual waste to energy recovery plants under interim contracts – had originally been awarded an estimated £62 million in PFI credits from Defra to build an energy-from-waste plant at its existing Bowling Back Lane site.
A consortium led by Skanska was appointed in 2011 to lead the project, however in 2013 Defra announced that it was withdrawing credit support, rendering the 25-year deal ‘unaffordable’. Along with Calderdale council, Bradford successfully reached an out of court settlement with the government in February this year (see letsrecycle.com story).
The cabinet has now resolved to secure a new waste strategy designed to allow for procurement of new contracts in 2015, with development of an alternative waste treatment project to begin in 2017.
Solutions
The report to be distributed includes the findings of interim strategic director Steve Hartley into four possible solutions for the district. These include;
- A bespoke long-term facility at the council’s Bowling Back Lane site
- A semi-merchant off-site thermal treatment facility (where the council provides the anchor contract at a third party location)
- An off-site thermal treatment facility requiring the separate pre-treatment of waste
- Spare capacity of 30-40,000 tonnes-per-year at another local authority PFI facility within the West Yorkshire region. This would not require construction of a separate MRF.
The report voices concerns that the first three options do not offer enough flexibility for the council, while spare capacity at a third-party site would involve the management of ‘multiple’ contractors.
Refuse collections
Bradford will also look at ‘slimming’ its residual waste bins, despite having to retain weekly residual waste collections until 2017 as a condition of the £4.6 million funding granted to the council under the DCLG Weekly Support Fund.
The report reads: “Work is currently underway on a draft Municipal Waste Minimisation and Management Strategy that seeks to ‘slim the residual bin’ by promoting the waste hierarchy to both reduce the amount of waste generated in the first place, and then to encourage more recycling.”
The local authority is also in the process of rolling out fortnightly dry recycling collections for residents, which was previously collected on a monthly basis. Plastic bottles have also been included in the range of materials that can be placed in residents’ commingled grey wheeled bins.
The service improvement commenced in summer 2013 and is expected to be fully implemented by the end of this year. The council hopes its recycling rate will rise to 33% by 2017.
A complete municipal waste management strategy is scheduled to be presented to the cabinet in November 2014. The report states it remains ‘unclear’ whether Calderdale will wish to partner in any new procurement.
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