We must reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill and we have decided this is the best long-term solution for Swindon
Cllr Keith Williams, Swindon borough council
The Wiltshire council is procuring a long-term contract worth up to £84 million for a company or consortium to deliver its plans, which would initially involve the building of a single 10,000 tonne-a-year capacity facility, dealing with residual waste from its household waste recycling centre (HWRC).
It aims to use an advanced thermal process, such as gasification or pyrolysis, to produce both heat and electricity from the waste using combined heat and power (CHP) technology.
Under the proposals, the council then expects the contractor to build additional capacity in phases, depending on how much residual waste is being dealt with both by the council itself and also its wholly-owned subsidiary Swindon Commercial Services (SCS) Ltd, which is focused on dealing with the borough's commercial and industrial waste.
Eventually, the council, which is a unitary authority, believes the project will be dealing with up to 130,000 tonnes-a-year of waste, with the potential to build some of the capacity near to new developments – offering benefits for using the heat produced by the plant or plants built under the contract.
Cost
While the council estimates the cost of using the new treatment system will be £54 million over the initial 10 years of the contract – covering 30,000 tonnes of waste and costing £8.3 million to develop, it claims this compared favourably to the £80 million in LATS and landfill tax it would cost to send the waste to landfill.
And, it claimed the new technology could secure it an additional income of £10 million.
Councillor Keith Williams, the local authority's cabinet member for streetscene, said: “This waste management approach has the potential to provide us with millions of pounds worth of income, so in a time where there is increasing pressure on local authority finances, this is a sensible investment for the council.
“We must reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill and we have decided this is the best long-term solution for Swindon,” he added.
The council began the procurement of the contract this month with the publication of a contract notice on the Official Journal of the European Union giving potential bidders until June 18 to submit their interest.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com this week (May 26) about the project, the council's head of waste management, Richard Fisher, said its emphasis was on delivering “small-scale, low impact” technology.
Phases
He said that the council was taking a three phase approach, with the first involving developing 10,000 tonnes-a-year of capacity, the second taking it up to 30,000 tonnes-a-year and the third potentially taking it up as far as 130,000 tonnes-a-year – of which 70,000 would be household waste from the borough council and the remainder C&I waste from SCS Ltd.
“We have got the agreed business case that we're taking forward to deal with our waste will cost us £54 million to manage the 30,000 tonnes over 10 years,” he said, adding that “if this really works we want to expand it.”
In terms of the initial 30,000 tonnes, he explained that: “We expect 20,000 tonnes of that to be needed in 2012/13, the back end of that year. That should last us until about 2016, at which point we'd have to go back to the council and ask for more money.”
“The key thing we're looking for is flexibility in the roll-out,” he said, explaining that decision about when, and indeed whether, to add the additional capacity would depend on waste growth in the borough.
“We're not guaranteeing any minimum tonnage, if the residual waste goes down to 40,000 tonnes, we just won't need the capacity,” he added, while also claiming that the project would not affect the council's recycling rate.
“It's clearly focused on the residual waste of the borough,” Mr Fisher said. “We have a 47.5% recycling rate at the moment, and we aim to maintain the 50% rate we should reach later this year.”
Site
The council is proposing to develop the initial facility at its Waterside Park HWRC, but Mr Fisher explained that future developments could be made elsewhere.
“We want to put up to 50,000 tonne capacity on that site but we also have large expansions around the town and see great potential from putting this low impact technology into place near them,” he said.
Swindon's residual household waste currently goes to landfill at a site within the borough which is owned by the council but managed by Wiltshire-based Hills Waste Solutions, but the council hopes to be diverting waste from landfill using the new contract by autumn 2011, after achieving contract award in January or February 2011.
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