Waste management firms believed to be bidding for the contract to run the transfer station as well as handle waste – including the bulking up and reprocessing of recyclables include: Sita, recently launched waste management firm SENREC (South East Northumberland Recycling), Premier, Biffa and Onyx. However, Northumberland County Council said it could not confirm the names of bidders as this was “commercially sensitive” information.
Initially running for two years, the contract will begin when the site opens next spring.
The proposed transfer station, located in Alnwick in north Northumberland has been budgeted for around 1million from Northumberland County Council’s own funds.
DEFRA has allocated 363,000 from its waste minimisation and recycling fund to meet with collection costs generated from collecting waste from householders which will then be brought to the site.
The station will include areas for the storage of dry recyclables such as plastic bottles, newspapers, cardboard and magazines, glass, aluminium, tin cans as well as electronics, according to Paul Jones, waste management officer at Northumberland County Council. Mr Jones said: “We’ll also be receiving electronics, including fridges and we have plans to build a nearby fridge reprocessing plant in motion.
“We’ll receive other electrical items although what else the site will receive depends on the development of WEEE.”
Landfill
The amount of waste the station will deal with will be around 25,000 tonnes per annum to begin with, although as Alnwick increases its kerbside recycling scheme to from its current 4,000 to encompass all of its 24,000 properties by 2005, this number will increase. The station may also eventually deal with waste collected from the nearby boroughs of Berwick and Hexham.
The waste transfer site is being built as the landfill site in Alnwick that serves much of the north of Northumberland, “reaches the end of its life”.
“It is not economically viable to extend any landfill related schemes further and there are no quarries nearby that we can utilise for landfill. The transfer station is the most economically viable option,” said Mr Jones.
With many of the landfill sites within proximity to Alnwick having closed down – with the nearest said to be more than thirty miles away, the transfer station is expected to become an attractive proposal for many waste management firms hoping to win the contract.
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