Onyx, Waste Recycling Group, Viridor and Simpro are thought to be in the running for the contract, worth over 500 million. After the deadline for tenders passes on Friday (16/01/04), the council is hoping to finalise the contract in the summer, ready to begin this autumn.
Nottinghamshire received approval from DEFRA for almost 32 million in Private Finance Initiative (PFI) credits for the waste contract in September 2003.
The contract will cover the recycling and disposal of around 400,000 tonnes a year of household waste collected by the county's seven district councils. In addition to the tonnage covered by the contract, the county will continue to send 50,000 tonnes of waste a year to the incinerator in Nottingham city.
The county council's current recycling rate is 16.5% and the council has a statutory target of 24% by 2005/06. But as part of applying for PFI support, contract will now set a more challenging target recycling rate for 2005/06 of 27%.
The council's assistant director for waste, Malvin Trigg told letsrecycle.com: “In the discussions with tenderers to date, they have said that the targets are challenging but they can be achieved.”
Recycling
Mr Trigg said that central to the tenders will be materials recycling facilities to handle waste collected by fortnightly twin bin schemes launched by the seven district councils last year and currently being rolled out across the county. It is hoped that 180,000 bins will have been delivered to Nottinghamshire residents by April 1, 2004 with a further 100,000 planned.
“As we have been working closely with the districts for the past three years developing a waste strategy, the districts have also been working with us on the contract,” said Mr Trigg, “They have found funds, which is not easy, to develop their own twin bin schemes. We have asked the districts to cover the county with the twin bin collections by the 1 April 2005, or at least the accessible areas, and that looks like it is going well.”
Nottinghamshire is looking for the successful bidder to get MRF sorting capacity on line in 2005.
Residual waste
Since Nottinghamshire's long term goal for the contract will be to reach a 50% recycling rate new arrangements will include treatment facilities for residual waste. Although Mr Trigg could not reveal much detail in this area prior to contract negotiations, he said the council is expecting to consider all residual waste treatment options put forward which might include Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT).
He said: “For us to reach targets in excess of 50% recycling at the end of the contract we will need treatment facilities for residual waste. We have to look at the full range through the negotiations. Incineration works, but there are major concerns surrounding it and there are a number of other processes out there. MBT could be offered, but we have a very rigorous process to assess all of the options.”
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