The bid for the Private Funding Initiative (PFI) money has been made to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Mick Allen, project manager for waste strategy at Nottinghamshire county council, said: “We have outlined our business case to DEFRA for PFI funding. We are also progressing our procurement programme through but we are awaiting a response from the government.”
The council announced that it had selected five bidders for the contract earlier this year. While Shanks has since pulled out of the running, the council's shortlist is now believed to include Onyx, Viridor, Simpro and Waste Recycling Group, which currently holds the county's disposal contract.
The disposal contract with the council will cover the recycling, recovery, landfill and composting of around 450,000 tonnes of waste a year. It will run to 2030 and may start as early as April next year.
Because of the wide scope of the contract, Mr Allen said that the council may break it up. He said: “We are able to split out the elements into four or five blocks. We may end up with more than one contractor.”
The county council's recycling and composting rate for 2002-03 was 16.6%, hitting the 2003-04 target of 16% a year early.
Mr Allen said: “When the contract will come into place depends on when it is signed. The existing contract has the end of March 2004 as its end date. We have a current joint contract joint with Nottingham city for the incinerator which ends in 2030 and we are looking to run the two contracts until they both expire.”
Nottingham city
As a unitary authority, Nottingham city council, is currently not involved with the county disposal contract. But the county has a contract until 2030 to send waste to the city's energy from waste plant.
Nottingham city council is to launch two kerbside recycling pilot schemes for green waste and paper and cardboard. They will cover six neighbourhoods and are set to begin later in the summer. The 6,000 households involved will receive a brown wheelie bin for the garden waste and bags to collect the paper and cardboard. The city council is expecting 425 tonnes of green waste and 330 tonnes of paper and card.
Alan Clark, environment spokesman at Nottingham city council, said: “The council has been set a recycling target of eight percent this year. This is going to rise dramatically by 2005-06. We are carrying out kerbside paper collections from 25,000 households. I know that many are already eager to see more organic waste being recycling and I am sure that this added trial initiative will be welcomed.”
The council has said it will roll out the kerbside schemes across the city if the trials prove successful. The council estimates that this equates to 12,000 tonnes of green waste and 10,000 tonnes of paper and card.
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