Council aims to be international example of best practice

New sorting lines will be built and recycling collections expanded to improve recycling, explains the council in its latest 20-year Waste Strategy.

The council adds that it will need ‘additional collection vehicles and some new infrastructure to sort recyclables’ in order to meet the recycling targets it has set itself.

The majority of waste will continue to go the council's EfW plant, at least until 2019 when a new assessment will be made as to the best treatment option for the city's waste.

Recycling

The council achieved a 17% recycling rate in 2005/06, which it says is marginally below the statutory target, but consistent with the performance of most metropolitan type authorities in England. The aim is to double that by 2011/2012 and reach 40% by 2026.

The document states: &#39Ac;hievement of these targets would make Birmingham an example of international best practice in recycling, for a city of its size and population'.

Currently, Birmingham collects green waste and paper from some of its 992,000 residents, but only 100,000 households have multi-materials collections. It is planning for all collections to move up a gear and expand across the city over coming years.

MRF

Asked whether he thought Birmingham was lagging behind other councils in rolling out multi-material recycling, Stuart Latimer, waste disposal operations manager, said: “We're relatively late, yes. We've taken time in deciding the methodology and the fact that we don't have our own MRF has come into the equation.

“We are exploring the market for a MRF at the moment; the city council will not be building and operating this kind of facility itself,” he added.

EfW

The majority of Birmingham's waste currently goes to the city's Energy from Waste plant and the Strategy confirms there are no plans to build a further facility of this type before 2020.

The Tyseley Energy from Waste plant, which opened in 1996 is envisaged to continue accepting Birmingham’s waste for the majority of the strategy period, ensuring Birmingham stays ‘one of the country’s top performers with regard to diverting waste from landfill’.

In 2004/05 the city council handled almost 570,000 tonnes of waste, 350,000 tonnes of which was processed through the EfW plant. A further 18% of the waste is sent to landfill.

The document continues: &#39BCC; will commit to maintain the existing level of EfW capacity for Birmingham’s municipal waste' and states that the facility currently falls in-line with a Strategic Environmental Assessment.

However, the council says that when it comes to tender for a new contract for waste treatment and disposal it will be appropriate to undertake a new environmental and social assessment to assess further use of EfW.

&#39A;t that stage the assessment is likely to influence the content of the municipal waste management strategy and a revision may be required', states the Strategy.