Scarborough council opens 800,000 sorting facility

The facility contains a trommel, ballistic separator and hand picking stations and is capable of handling over 25,000 tonnes of materials a year. It is designed to be an improvement to a materials recycling facility which was opened at the site in 2004 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Phil Bedford, Yorwaste's head of operations, said: “This is a state-of-the-art facility, which offers Scarborough borough council the opportunity to recycle greater volumes of waste, while making it easier for residents to dispose of their recyclable rubbish responsibly.”

At the Seamer Carr site, there are already facilities for green waste composting, aggregates recycling, landfill and landfill gas power generation and a household waste recycling centre.

Yorwaste has also received planning permission for a £4 million pyrolysis plant at the site, which is one of the projects supported by the government's New Technologies Demonstrator Programme (see letsrecycle.com story).

A spokesman for the company revealed that it expected the facility would become operational this summer.

He explained: “The plant will convert 18,000 tonnes of domestic refuse a year from Scarborough into gas which will be used as a fuel to produce 2MW of electricity a year.”

Leeds

This week, Yorwaste also announced that is has won a three year contract for the disposal of street sweepings from Leeds council.

The £750,000 contract will involve the collection of 8,000 tonnes of sweepings each year from the council's Kirkstall Road transfer station, after recyclable materials will be removed.

Material will then be taken to Yorwaste's open windrow composting site at Harewood Whin, where it will be composted into an organic product for use in restoring the site's landfill.

Tim Reay, Yorwaste's head of sales and marketing, said: “We are very pleased to have been awarded this contract. Harewood Whin is now one of the largest organic waste composting sites in the UK, capable of producing some 50,000 tonnes of high-quality compost annually. This product is very popular with landscape architects and land reclamation specialists.”