In total, the three councils combined will be sending a total of 32,000 tonnes of dry recyclables to the Peterborough MRF each year under the five year deal, which has the option of being extended for a further two.
Cambridgeshire started sending its material to Viridor on Monday (November 16). Fenland and Huntingdonshire currently send their recyclable material to the Community Waste at MRF at Milton Keynes but Viridor will take over when these contracts expire next month.
Stuart Wood, Viridor's regional manager, said: “We're delighted to be working with Cambridge city council on this important development in its recycling strategy. The Peterborough MRF utilises modern technology to ensure the quality of the outputs meets the stringent end-market demands, which is extremely important for the councils.”
Collection
As part of the new arrangements with Viridor, Cambridge is switching from source separated kerbside recycling collections to commingled collections.
The council has been issuing new bins to residents since the end of October, which will see householders use a three-bin system to separate residual, organic and commingled dry recyclables. These will replace the existing blue and black boxes, which separated plastic bottles from other dry recyclables.
Under the new system, which was also introduced this week, dry recyclables collected in the 240 litre blue bin by Cambridge city council's in-house recycling collection service will be taken to a waste transfer station at Waterbeach to the north of Cambridge for bulking before being transported to the Peterborough facility for sorting.
Speaking about the collection changes, councillor Mike Pitt, executive councillor for environmental and waste services, said: “Now that all dry recycling can go in one bin there is no need for residents to sort materials. We're confident this will give people the extra incentive they need to start recycling, or to recycle more.”
A spokeswoman for Cambridge city council told letsrecycle.com that the council was “delighted with the impressive deal” regarding the sorting contract and looked forward to working with Viridor.
She said: “That gate fee value is better for us if Viridor gets more money from the value of the materials and is also linked to the value of the particular materials and that is how the gate fee is worked out.”
The council said it had taken the deal due to the value-for-money it offered but it would not divulge the value of the contract due to the commercial sensitivity.
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