The partnership of 14 local authorities has confirmed that the county's three incinerators are now running at full capacity, taking in almost all non-recyclable waste collected from Hampshire households.
Meanwhile, so much waste is being recycled through kerbside recycling schemes, that there have been shortfalls in black bag waste sent to the incinerators. However, this shortfall has been dealt with using residual material deposited at Hampshire recycling centres.
Steve Read, executive officer at Project Integra, told letsrecycle.com: “The incinerators have been running at full capacity. We are recycling very, very well, but virtually all kerbside collected black bag waste is going through the incinerators now.
” virtually all kerbside collected black bag waste is going through the incinerators now “
– Steve Read – Project Integra
“We do also take material from household waste recycling centres if there is a shortfall of black bag waste, but there is no issue of the incinerators running out of material,” Mr Read said.
The county achieved a 31% recycling rate for household waste during 2004/05. Residual waste is sent to three state-of-the-art incinerators, at Marchwood near Southampton, at Portsmouth and at Chineham, near Basingstoke.
Energy
A spokesman for Veolia Environmental, which operates the waste management contract for Hampshire, said: “At our civic amenity sites we recover material for recycling and provide an outlet for disposal. From the small proportion of waste that cannot be recycled we recover the energy.
“Relatively speaking, municipal waste is only a small part of overall waste. There are many other waste streams from which energy can be recovered.”
Strategy
Project Integra's management board, which met earlier this month, has now agreed a new Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy.
Under the strategy, Hampshire's district and unitary authorities will avoid setting up schemes to collect organic waste centrally for composting, Mr Read said, explaining that Integra's aim is to promote home composting.
He said: “We carried out an impact assessment, and found that the overall environmental impact of running organic waste collections was negative. In a sense, the fact that we don't have to worry about the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme means we have time to develop home composting.”
With any past disagreements within the partnership now being put behind it, the next step for Project Integra is to develop closer working with commercial waste producers, as set out by the Joint Strategy.
Mr Read said the partnership had to consider how to integrate the management of non-municipal material into existing plans, but ruled out the use of municipal incinerators for commercial waste. “It is not the case that we are incinerating any commercial material or are moving to do that,” he said.
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