Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland councils, collectively known as the South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership, announced on December 20 that they had submitted a funding bid to Defra for financial support for new infrastructure.
The application comes just weeks after another seven local authority projects were told they met the criteria for PFI funding, while the sluggish pace with which the PFI process has developed in 2007 was criticised (see letsrecycle.com story).
The three north-eastern authorities are likely to learn early next year if the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has approved the funding bid.
The application requires the councils to choose a technology and detail how it could be developed. While specific details of this “reference project” are not available, an assessment of waste disposal technologies saw energy-from-waste with combined heat and power come out on top, with mechanical biological treatment close behind.
All options
However waste chiefs have insisted they will remain open to all options. Fiona Brown, South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership's project director, explained: “Defra's PFI funding is just one of the options available to us and we will be exploring others.
“Defra asks all funding applicants to identify methods of dealing with their waste and forecast how much they may cost but that could well change before contracts are awarded.”
She added: “We can't continue to send waste to landfill and our local residents recognise that. We have set a target to increase recycling across the three councils to 50 percent by 2020, but that will still leave an estimated 185,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste.
“There isn't necessarily one solution. We might use a combination of existing waste management facilities – or emerging technology might mean we use something else altogether. This is the first step in our making this possible.”
Timeline
The new facility could be required to process up to 200,000 tonnes of material each year and if the plans go according to schedule, the facility would be fully operational by 2013, with construction beginning in 2010.
The preferred bidder for the 25-year contract is expected to be selected in October 2009, with the contract due to begin in 2010.
In 2006/07, the councils recycled 23% of the 370,000 tonnes of waste it collected and want to increase this to 50% by 2020.
Residual waste is presently collected weekly and recyclables are picked up fortnightly. SITA UK and Durham-based waste management firm Premier are among the firms which presently have contracts for the services.
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