Lincolnshire 20 million CHP plant ready for February

The facility cost 20 million to build and will burn 56,000 tonnes of waste a year. This will all come from North East Lincolnshire council collections as part of owner Newlincs's 25-year waste disposal contract with the council.

The plant will use oscillating kiln technology of the type developed by Newlincs' French parent company. Operations manager Sharon Hunt explained: “The plant will use incineration with energy from waste… it is our own technology and is already used by 30 plants in Europe.” The energy will be used by neighbouring synthetic latex manufacturing plant, Synthomer.

Council recycling officer Ian Graham said: “The CHP plant will be a small scale energy from waste plant, processing 56,000 tonnes per year. But we produce 80-90,000 tonnes of waste in North East Lincolnshire.”

Recycling

NE Lincolnshire is likely to bid for more funds to increase kerbside collections in the latest round of DEFRA's Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund.

The authority finished rolling out an extensive fortnightly triple box kerbside recycling scheme this summer, to 29,000 of its 69,500 households. The triple box scheme takes glass, cans and paper, which are separated at the kerbside and collected by council teams.

Another 29,000 households also receive fortnightly green waste collections, while 3,000 have monthly paper-only collections. And 2,000 more are still using an old black box scheme which collects commingled plastic bottles and food and drinks cans every four weeks.

Between November 2002 and June 2003, these collections yielded 244 tonnes glass, 61 tonnes of cans, 540 tonnes of paper, 3,900 tonnes of garden waste and 740 tonnes from the black box collections.

Sustainability
Mr Graham said: “We would like to expand the triple box scheme – but this comes down to sustainability and whether we have got the manpower.” He said the council is particularly keen to expand the garden waste collections, which have proved popular with residents. “Where we can, we&#39d; also like to expand dry recyclable collections, but it comes down to whether we can sustain this after DEFRA funding expires,” he said.

The council has a recycling rate of 22% and has already exceeded its target for 2005/06 of 21%. Mr Graham said he believed the authority is well on track to meet its 2010 target of 30%.