Work is to start in June this year on a new materials recycling facility for SWM at Sunbury in the north of the county. Construction of the new MRF comes against an unsettled background in Surrey where some of the district and borough councils have looked at recycling routes that are independent of the county's contract with SWM, which is a subsidiary of SITA UK.
Only last week waste management firm Grundon said it wanted to build a large materials recycling facility to serve the Surrey borough of Mole Valley (see letsrecycle.com story) while councils such as Spelthorne have expressed interest in the recycling schemes run by Cheshire Recycling in London such as that operated in Richmond-upon-Thames.
SWM's proposals cover composting, recycling and the continued development of civic amenity sites. The company aims to have its Sunbury MRF up and running by January 2004. Planning permissions for a 30,000 tonne composting facility in Surrey and a civic amenity site redevelopment in Guildford will be submitted to planners in April 2003.
Sue Bishop, of SWM said: “We are really pleased to start work on the MRF. The public have been asking for enhanced recycling for some time and the plant will make the economics of recycling material more favourable. It will sort cardboard, steel and aluminium cans and different types of plastic bottles using some of the latest mechanical techniques.”
Delivering
John Scanlon, general manager for SWM, added: “We are committed to delivering the infrastructure Surrey needs and since we started running the
contract three years ago, we have built two new recycling facilities in the county and redeveloped several civic amenity and recycling sites. Clearly, these developments are now starting to have an impact as recycling rates at these sites have continued to shoot up. Moving forward we will continue to work closely with the council and the waste collection authorities to understand their recycling requirements for the future.”
SWM still faces difficulties over its plans for energy from waste plants in the county. The county council is considering whether to resubmit a planning application for an energy from waste plant in Capel after objectors won a judicial review over the granting of planning permission. But, on the recycling side the picture is more positive. Since SWM took over the management of Surrey’s waste in September 1999 the recycling rate has increased from 11% to 17.9%.
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