And, waste management firm Premier Waste has started to build a recycling and aerobic digestion plant at Monument Park in Washington, Sunderland, to process up to 400,000 tonnes of waste a year.
Both projects represent increasing government and legislative pressure to divert residual waste from landfill and add to a growing portfolio of plants using new waste treatment technologies.
Phil Towers, director of the recycling division at Premier Waste Management, said: “Waste offers up a wealth of reusable materials and the value of recycling to the environment is well recognised. Premier is creating resource recovery operations like the one at Monument Park ahead of governmental and consumer requirements to help meet demand in the region.”
Premier
Premier Waste revealed it has started building its “recovery and recycling centre” in Sunderland this week.
The facility will include a materials recycling facility which will eventually process up to 100,000 tonnes of year. It received planning permission from Sunderland city council last month and is expected to be operational in December 2007.
In the long-term, Premier Waste is also planning to build an aerobic digestion plant at the site, using bespoke technology known as Parc, which is being trialled under the government's New Technologies Demonstrator Programme (see letsrecycle.com story). This breaks down organic waste for use as a soil conditioner and is made up of twelve concrete towers, each capable of processing 25,000 tonnes of waste a year.
The centre will serve existing contracts held by Premier Waste to treat both household and commercial waste from across North East England, and is designed to attract new customers as well.
Tony Hitchens, marketing director at Premier Waste, said: “We hope we will get more businesses in the North East recycling and that we will have somewhere close by to offer them the recycling they need.”
Graphite
Graphite Resources, meanwhile, is intending to submit planning permission for its autoclave plant near Redcar in the next two weeks. It will form part of a 25ha site which will be the Tees Valley's first dedicated ecopark, which will include a civic amenity site and materials recycling centre.
The autoclave is expected to divert a minimum of 75% of the waste it treats from landfill, as well as achieve “significant” reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. It also claims to separate commingled materials which are “beyond the technical and economic scope of conventional waste treatment processes”.
Subject to planning consent, the facility will be the second autoclave to be built by Graphite Resources after a plant at Derwenthaugh EcoParc on Tyneside which is currently being built (see letsrecycle.com story). Its announcement comes just days after plans for a similar plant in Merseyside were unveiled (see letsrecycle.com story).
Although the plant has secured no contracts to date, it expects to offer a competitive gate fee due to its large size because it will create economies of scale.
Renew Tees Valley (RTV) – which spearheads the development of waste management and renewable energy businesses in the Tees Valley – has worked closely with Graphite Resources to initiate the project.
Chris Hayward, technical manager of waste and recycling at RTV, said: “This project could revolutionise waste management in the Tees Valley. Graphite Resources has created a waste management model that provides economically viable solutions to some of the major problems, associated with extracting valuable resources, from the most difficult to manage waste streams.”
Reprocess
Michael Thompson, director of Graphite Resources, explained that the ecopark would also provide facilities to reprocess materials from the autoclaving process and surrounding businesses in a closed-loop cycle.
He said: “We hope the facility will achieve landfill diversion and add value to the recycling chain by turning them into useful products. At the moment we send all plastics for reprocessing in China and there is no reason we can't reprocess them on Teesside.”
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