The bid is being put forward by Cambridgeshire county council with the support of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Waste Strategy Partnership.
The partnership includes Cambridge city council, Cambridgeshire county council and Peterborough city council as well as East Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Huntingdonshire and South Cambridgeshire district councils. The Partnership was formed four years ago to draw up the Waste Strategy, which was published in 2002 (see letsrecycle.com story).
If the Partnership's PFI bid is successful, a tender process will begin next year to find a private waste contractor.
Likely to be worth as much as 600 million, the new contract would involve the design and construction of new waste infrastructure as well as operation and maintenance of existing facilities required to deal with waste in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
Commenting on the bid, waste partnership co-ordinator Bernard Warr said: “The cost of dealing with the rubbish in our dustbins is rising and Europe has set us some tough new recycling targets which mean we will have to double the levels of recycling in our area in the next decade. To make this happen we need to look at innovative and environmentally sound ways of dealing with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough's waste. The money we hope to get from the PFI bid will help us do just that.”
The move to a new waste contract comes as the Partnership is predicting substantial increases in the costs of landfilling municipal waste. At the moment, collection costs are about 25 a tonne, with landfill costs at about 30 a tonne including 14 a tonne Landfill Tax. But as the Landfill Tax increases to 35 by 2011, these costs will rise to about 76 a tonne, the Partnership revealed.
Householders in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough achieved a recycling rate of just under 20% in 2000-01. The partnership's strategy aims to reach 33% by the end of this year and 60% by 2020.
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