In a transport, economy and environment overview and scrutiny committee meeting last week (22 October) the council reported that the facility has “fallen short” of targets ever since operations commenced in 2018.
The MBT plant is located at the Allerton Waste Recovery Park, which also consists of an anaerobic digester (AD) and an energy from waste (EFW) facility.
Through MBT, the centre aims to recover recyclables and food waste from residual waste collected across North Yorkshire and York. It then processes the remaining residual waste through EfW.
However, the council reported that the recyclables recovered from the residual waste are of poorer quality than recyclables collected separately from households. Due to this, Amey claims that there has been difficulty in placing the material on the market.
Missing the contractual targets however, has resulted in annual performance deductions being levied for each contract year, which has now totalled to £652,903, as shown below.
Targets
Under the contract with Amey, the council requires at least 5% of contracted waste to be recycled or composted. In 2020/21 the facility only recycled 1.08% of waste.
Between April and August 2021, recycling performance at the plant averaged 1.13%.
The council also reported that the facility had a planned maintenance outage during April and May which resulted in waste being diverted.
And, since the planned outage, there have been issues with mechanical treatment equipment and staffing problems.
As a result, the council said Amey is only forecasting a recycling performance of around 1.5% by the end of the year “as markets, particularly for plastics, slowly improve”.
The council reported that Amey continues to explore “new outlets for recyclable material extracted from the waste stream”.
Landfill
The council revealed that minimum landfill diversion targets have been achieved in all years since the facility become operational, however Amey have identified there is “still room for improvement”.
Allerton has “suffered some issues with defects” which have resulted in planned outage periods taking longer than anticipated, and the plant has also had a number of unplanned outages.
These unplanned outages have resulted in more material being diverted away from the park than anticipated and impacted overall landfill performance.
The council report reads: “Overall, general performance across the contract has been good with a small number of areas identified as requiring improvement. Work is ongoing between the Authority and Contractor to try and maximise plant operations and improve overall availability. This in turn should increase percentage of material diverted away from landfill and overall recycling performance.”
‘Severely affected’
” Recycling performance has been severely affected by market conditions and a drop in demand for these materials in recent years.”
- Amey spokesperson
An Amey spokesperson said: “The park which has been open since March 2018 is reducing the amount of household waste going to landfill in the county by more than 80%, well in excess of the contractual target. Diverting this waste away from landfill means we can use it to generate enough energy to power the equivalent of 40,000 homes and significantly reduce the carbon footprint of our communities.
“Allerton Waste Recovery Park processes residual waste from household and it separates recyclable material and an organic fraction for anaerobic digestion before recovering energy from waste from the remaining waste. Its recycling performance has been severely affected by market conditions and a drop in demand for these materials in recent years.”
“We are proud of the outcomes we are delivering and are working in partnership with North Yorkshire County Council to improve performance and deliver better value and environmental outcomes.”
Waste sale
Amey, owned by the Spanish company Ferrovial, is in the process of exiting the UK waste market but may keep its EfW division.
It sold six contracts to Urbaser in January (see letsrecycle.com story), and announced in July that it lost £10.21 million through its EfW activities (see letsrecycle.com story).
It’s thought a separate company may be set up to old four of Amey’s EfW contracts, including the Isle of Wight and Milton Keynes facilities.
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