The Tyne & Wear authorities intend to provide kerbside recycling to 467,000 households by April 2003 from January. Gateshead, South Tyneside, North Tyneside, Sunderland and Newcastle invited bids 18 months ago for multi-material and paper-only collections to cover their whole area.
Final bids for the contract were received from four companies: SITA, Premier Waste (formerly Durham County Waste Management), Cheshire Recycling and Middlesex-based community recycling group Ealing Community Transport (ECT).
The speed of the project's development will be influenced by recent awards won from DEFRA by two of the authorities. Gateshead received 600,000 and South Tyneside 450,000 from the 140m National Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund last month.
As each of the five councils will have their own contract with the successful bidder, it is likely that the Gateshead and South Tyneside schemes will start first. The other authorities will apply for the second round of DEFRA funding in September and, if a contractor has been agreed, hope to begin collections in about March 2003.
One of the requests of the tender was that bidders' prices remain fixed for eight months, in case funding came at different times in this way.
However, the two successful councils are raring to go. “We want to move quickly when we have agreed on a tender. There is huge public expectation in South Tyneside that this service should come in,” a spokesman for the council said.
A spokesman for Gateshead Council said: “We are pushing like mad to get it done because it was in our best value performance to do this by the end of the year.”
Insiders said the tender prices would be hard to estimate, as they cover over 200 scenarios relating to paper and different combinations of multi-material collections for the five councils.
Bidders
Ron Humphries from Cheshire Recycling confirmed the company has put in a bid and added: “We provide multi-material collection to half a million homes and paper-only to three million homes so if we can't get it right then good luck to whoever does.”
Andy Bond of ECT, which only has contracts in London and Oxfordshire, said that it would be an achievement for the company if their bid was successful.
SITA, which is believed to have a dormant MRF in the area suitable for sorting plastics, and Premier Waste also confirmed they had put in offers, but declined to discuss details at this stage.
Cheshire Recycling already runs a paper recycling contract for all the authorities except Newcastle. Premier Waste is the waste disposal contractor for South Tyneside and SITA runs waste transfer sites in the Newcastle area.
The councils are hoping for mixed collection of as many materials as possible, although the successful contract is unlikely to include plastics because of high costs.
If the authorities agree on a contractor, 467,000 households will be affected, 430,000 of which will receive kerbside collections. Around 30-35,000 are in high-rise buildings. Contractors have been asked to suggest alternative recycling solutions for these homes.
The council waste departments will decide on a contractor next week and their recommendations are due to be discussed by the full councils in September. Insiders are optimistic that schemes for the authorities with funding should be in place by the start of 2003.
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