Local skip hire and recycling firm Sussex Waste Recycling, which trades as Rabbit Skips, is developing a £10 million plant to burn 40,000 tonnes of wood, paper and organic-based construction and demolition waste a year.
Sussex Waste Recycling claims that the boiler, combined with a new £1,400,000 materials recycling facility, will enable the company to recycle or recover energy from 98% of the waste it receives.
Managing director and owner Greg Blurton, told letsrecycle.com: “The facility is under construction now and the first parts of the plant come in late September. We expect to be fully operational by the end of June.
“The investment will make us very strong and set us up for the long term. We can guarantee customers 98% recycling and recovery of the waste in their skips,” he added.
MRF
At the Lancing site, which is one of two owned by Sussex Waste Recycling in Sussex, the company plans to shred lighter waste from skips such as plastic, using a “Dinosaurus” shredder. This will then join inert material such as soil and rubble to be sorted by the new materials recycling facility.
The MRF will include new Dutch and Belgian trommels, screens, blowers, magnets and conveyors which will separate the material into different fractions such as hard and soft plastics, soils, aggregates and biomass such as wood, paper and card. Plastics will then be exported abroad, soils sent for landfill restoration and secondary aggregates will be sold for use in drainage and concrete.
Biomass
Meanwhile, the biomass will be burnt in the new energy from waste plant to heat water, which will drive steam turbines that will export 4MW of electricity to the national – enough to power around 6,000 homes.
The plant already has a pollution prevention and control permit (PPC) and will be closely monitored by the Environment Agency. It will also be fully compliant with the Waste Incineration Directive, and should be eligible for government credits known as Renewables Obligations Certificates (ROCs).
Mr Blurton said that due to a shortage of landfill capacity in both East and West Sussex, the increasing landfill tax escalator and the need for all waste to be pre-treated before being sent to landfill from September this year he expected there to be increasing demand to divert construction and demolition waste from landfill in the area.
He said: “We saw that energy from waste was the way forward as it solves both the waste problem and the energy problem in this country. Trade waste and construction waste has been vastly overlooked up until now and I think we are well ahead of the game.”
Subscribe for free