The deal, worth 25 million, was sealed on Friday and will see SITA continuing to take waste collected from wheeled bins, blue boxes and brown bins as well as material from the council's eight household waste recycling centres and trade waste from businesses.
North Lincolnshire was held up as an example of a Labour-run council delivering a high recycling performance in the Labour Party Manifesto for the local authority elections earlier this year (see letsrecycle.com story). The council currently recycles about 18% of its 100,000 tonnes of municipal waste, surpassing its 16% target for 2003-04, and is now aiming to recycle 24% by 2005-06.
A blue box scheme is currently picking up paper from 36,000 homes, and is expected to be expanded to 64,000 homes by Cheshire Recycling and its collection sub-contractor PD Logistics.
Commenting on the new contract, Cllr John Briggs, cabinet member for Housing and Neighbourhood Services, said: “I am pleased that we can extend the contract with SITA UK. They have an excellent track record. In the last five years, they have recovered around 70 per cent of waste at the household recycling sites. We have been set tough recycling and composting targets by the government that we must meet. This is not going to be easy.
He added: “It is important that we have systems in place to help meet the targets and we are confident that working together with SITA UK, we are able to do this. If we don’t meet the targets, the authority will be fined, so it is important that residents do their bit to help.”
SITA's plans for North Lincolnshire include a new composting plant that will be a key part of meeting the council's biodegradable landfill diversion targets under the remit of the forthcoming Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme. By 2010, councils have to reduce the amount of biodegradable waste going to landfill by 25% – based on the amount of waste generated in 1995. Since 1995, North Lincolnshire has seen its waste collections increase from 88,000 tonnes to 100,000 tonnes.
Improvements to the tune of 250,000 will also be carried out by SITA to the Cottage Beck Road household waste recycling centre, while a new disposal site dealing with residual waste will be developed at the existing Crosby Warren landfill owned by Corus.
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