Mark Faulconbridge, operations director at H W Martin, said: “We are delighted that Gateshead and South Tyneside councils have awarded these prestigious contracts to us. We are renowned for ‘recycling with responsibility' and providing our local authority clients with cost-effective solutions.
“We look forward to an exciting and productive relationship with our new partners in the North East as we help them to increase their recycling performance.”
Commenting on the contract award, Colin Huntington, head of waste services and grounds maintenance at Gateshead council, said: “The MRF service is a very important piece of a complex jigsaw that will see the partner authorities reduce reliance on landfill and develop much more sustainable ways of managing all of its household waste, from residual waste to green waste, to recycling through to street sweepings.”
H W Martin provides facilities for several local authorities and has a network of household waste recycling centres, transfer stations, materials recycling facilities and refuse derived fuel production facilities together with a fleet of vehicles delivering recyclables and waste to processors.
The MRF deal, which is for an undisclosed sum, is part of a raft of contracts being procured by the South Tyne and Wear Waste Partnership, which is comprised of Gateshead and South Tyneside councils and Sunderland city council.
Sunderland city council opted to award its own MRF sorting contract, which also coincides with a change to its kerbside collection service, to a consortium led by Graphite Resources. The consortium is developing a materials sorting facility at the Derwenthaugh Ecoparc in Gateshead.
Service
The award of the MRF contract comes as the local authorities switch from source separated collections of dry recycling to commingled under a new collection service, which sees residents in Gateshead and South Tyneside issued with 240-litre, blue wheeled bins for dry recycling, replacing the current 55-litre kerbside box used by the councils.
However, the service is not fully commingled – as the wheeled bins include an inner caddy to enable paper to be kept separate from glass, cans, plastic and cardboard in the main body of the bin.
Delivery of the bins, which is set to start this month, is set to take six-months to complete the roll-out to all 88,000 households in Gateshead. In South Tyneside, delivery of the new bins is expected to start on May 24, with the local authority hopeful of completing the roll-out by the end of June.
It is hoped that the new system will contribute towards the councils meeting a 50% recycling and composting target by 2020, with the local authorities currently recording recycling rates at around 30%.
The South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership is currently procuring a major PFI-funded waste treatment project, thought to be worth up to £1.3 billion, with the shortlist of bidders for the long-term deal being narrowed to just two in December 2009.
The contract, which is set to cover 200,000 tonnes of household waste from the region each year, is now being contested by SITA UK and United Utilities. The council expects to name a preferred bidder in summer 2010 with hopes of having a large-scale waste treatment facility operational by 2014 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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