The report — compiled by the council’s cabinet member for the environment — explains that the council recorded an “artificially low” recycling rate of 64.94% in 2019/20.
It says that as Swansea is one of the only councils in Wales not sending their residual waste for energy recovery, it is missing out on “claiming recycling tonnage for the residue ash produced”, which the report estimated to be around 6%.
The Welsh government set a 70% recycling target by 2025, with fines of £200 for every tonne missed. This represents a fine of £250,000 for every 1% the a council is short of the target, the report explained.
This would mean an EfW deal would enable the council to hit the 70% target based on last year’s recycling results.
Procurement
The report said the council will be looking to procure for an energy from waste provider from January 2022 onwards, once the Tir John landfill site the council operates in Port Tennant, Swansea, is full.
The Tir John Landfill site is owned by the council and operated by Enovert.
“We need to fill Tir John with material to achieve the planned profile prior to closure and landscaping. Diverting all our residual waste from landfill to Energy from Waste would not only leave the landfill site short of material (which would subsequently need to be bought in), it would also cost approx £750K per year,” the report said.
It added: “We are due to start a stand-alone procurement process to obtain a long-term solution for the disposal/treatment of our residual waste having exhausted all options on a regional solution in the last 12 months.”
In 2018, it was announced that the Tir John landfill site would close in January 2022 because it has nearly reached capacity, by which point the council hopes to have an EfW supplier in place.
Next steps
The councils says it will now continue work on the procurement of a long-term energy from waste solution.
However, it noted that the Welsh Government is reviewing the definition of what is considered recycling. This may negatively impact the recycling performance for each Welsh LA.
This is thought to be linked to the EU measure which looks to measure the recycling rate ‘further down the line’ when recycling enters the recycling operation, rather than when it is ‘sent for recycling’, as is the case in the UK (see letsrecycle.com story).
Conference
The RDF Conference will take place online on Thursday 26 November. Hear from the RDF Industry Group, FEAD, the Environment Agency and more. View the full programme here.
I know this article doesn’t say plastic waste will be burnt, but it does seem likely.
I suspect it won’t be long before people regret destroying plastic, especially with technology allowing it to be converted back to the monomer, they seem to forget plastic is a non renewable resource.
I can’t help but wonder when this will come back to bite us