Wrexham County Borough Council has received conditional approval of PFI credits worth 22.7 million to build a recycling plant.
This will include a materials recovery facility for the sorting of recyclable materials and an enclosed composting facility for the treatment of organic waste.
Wrexham is working with the Spanish-owned Waste Recycling Group Ltd on the project, and a planning application is expected to be submitted by late summer, with the site scheduled to open in 2009.
Councillor Aled Roberts, leader of Wrexham Council said: “It likely to be one of the biggest projects ever to be delivered by Wrexham Council, and has been in the making for the last 10 years.”
Residual
The proposals also include a plan for residual waste, but since they are still being finalized, the council was unable to give further details.
Wrexham council was criticized by some of its councillors earlier this year after it considered sending residual waste to Kent for incineration.
But Cllr Roberts said the councils is seeking local avenues for its non-recyclable waste. He said: “We are anxious to avoid landfill and it is very important we have a fallback position on what to do with our residual waste. There are very few ways available to deal with residual waste and we are trying to provide local solutions.”
“From 2010 onwards, we can look at what we can do with residual waste and find the best market solution. There may be new plants elsewhere or there maybe new technologies, and we have the flexibility to respond to these new technologies.”
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Pyrolysis
The council has attempted to develop a waste plant using new technology in the past, but after the Welsh Assembly first gave approval in 1997 for a gasification and pyrolysis facility to create a refuse derived fuel, the project faced massive local opposition.
The council's preferred bidder, Portuguese-owned firm HLC, replaced the incinerator with another technology but the plans again came to a dead end when the plant site was sold (see letsrecycle.com story).
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