The city authority's cabinet member for the environment, councillor Graham Murphy, is to officially open the site at 2pm, following investment from the council, £500,000 from Defra and further funds from site operator Viridor Waste Management.
Trommels, magnets and scanners have also been introduced, in place of a former star screen.
Mary Corin, Viridor's contract manager for the site, explained that this was because star screens separated flat material from round and were not as effective with material increasingly being compacted by refuse collection vehicles before it arrived for sorting.
She said: “One of the biggest problems for many MRFs is that there is a mis-match between the technology and material input.”
With the improvements in place, Peterborough council started offering kerbside collections of glass bottles and jars in March – and it expects to boost its already impressive 46% recycling and composting rate for 2007/08.
The glass will be sent to St Helens based Viridor subsidiary Viridor Glass Recycling, where the vast majority is processed into high-value glass fibre which is used in insulation.
Councillor Murphy said: “The materials recycling facility is at the core of the city council's success in being the top recycler among the UK's unitary authorities.”
“The investment in new automatic separation equipment puts us in an ideal position to stretch our recycling performance even further towards 50% this year. This is important for everybody because landfilled rubbish damages the environment and local councils face heavy financial penalties if they do not make massive cuts in volumes of waste being landfilled,” he added.
Materials
Since opening in 1997, the Peterborough MRF has recycled over 100,000 tonnes of materials that would otherwise have been dumped at the local Dogsthorpe landfill site. Initially, the council issued all households with a small green crate for their materials.
In 2001 the crates were replaced with 240 litre wheeled bins and in 2005 households were also issued with 240 litre brown wheeled bins for organic garden materials.
The city council collects around 100,000 tonnes of household waste a year and recyclables such as paper, card, metal cans, plastic bottles and glass represent just over 20% of the total.
Organic waste represents around 26% of the total and is re-processed by Crowland-based Organic Recycling Ltd for re-sale as compost.
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