The Northampton-based company began operating the contract this week (March 22) and expects to deal with 35,000 tonnes-a-year of residual household waste collected by the Essex local authority until the deal ends on March 31 2017.
Thurrock’s residual waste disposal was previously carried out by Veolia, under a deal which gave it responsibility for all the council’s waste and recycling management services, but the council began a procurement process in April 2009 based on dividing the services into six lots.
The disposal and treatment deal is the first of those lots to be formally awarded, and comes against the backdrop of the council facing legal action from Veolia over its decision to take the most valuable lot – the waste and recycling collection contract – in-house (see letsrecycle.com story).
Allington
Under the WRG deal, waste collected by Thurrock will be sent to the council’s transfer station to be bulked up before being sent to either its Allington energy-from-waste facility in Kent or to landfill for disposal.
Initially, the waste is expected to divided equally between the two routes, but, by the end of the deal, WRG hopes to have shifted the balance so that 90% of the waste is sent to Allington to be used to recover energy.
The significance of this was highlighted by WRG’s development director, Andy Ryan, who said: “We are delighted to have won this contract and look forward to working with Thurrock, and the people of the district, in increasing the sustainability of their waste and resources.
“In particular, it’s good to be involved in a process that will see an increasing amount of residual waste being treated over the lifetime of the contract, so that further value is extracted in the form of electricity,” he added.
The council also expressed its satisfaction over the fact that the award of the contract would reduce its reliance on landfill, with its cabinet member for the environment, councillor Mike Revell, claimed that: “Thurrock is now one of the leading authorities in the East of England to put in place specific measures to deal with the historic blight of landfill.
“This contract will underpin the council’s aim to recover value from residual waste and will ensure that we achieve the challenging targets which have been set for us by the Government.”
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