WRG to begin developing facilities for Wrexham PFI

The facilities are for Wrexham county borough council under a 25-year PFI contract which the company won last year and will open in July 2009.

But, it remains uncertain as to what future treatment will be available for residual waste now that an incinerator in the borough has been ruled out. One council source said: “The idea of an incinerator here is definitely dead.”

The contract will allow Wrexham to meet its 2010 targets for recycling or composting and landfill diversion targets up to 2013 as a minimum, and will allow good progress towards 2020 targets.

The construction work is being carried out at the council's Bryn Lane site on the Wrexham Industrial Estate. A spokesman for WRG explained that this will include a transfer station for residual waste, bulking up facilities for kerbside recyclables, and the in-vessel composting facility for green waste, kitchen waste and card.

The in-vessel composting plant will have a capacity of 70,000 tonnes per annum and six large concrete tunnels. Technology and plant is from Dutch firm WTT – Waste Treatment Technologies.

Recycling

Ruth Richards, waste operations manager for Wrexham, said that the materials and residual waste will continue to be collected by the council. “We have been rolling out kerbside recycling since 2003, with a weekly collection of dry recyclables and an alternating-weekly collection of residual waste and green material.

With volumes of recyclables increasing and because of population increases, the council has recently carried out a review of its rounds and is likely to have to  introduce two new collection routes. The population has reached 123,000 in 57,000 homes.

One of the limitations of its system is that recyclables are sorted at Bryn Lane and this limits volumes that vehicles can carry. Used newspapers go to Shotton, plastics to AWS, glass to Viridor and cans to local merchant Challoner and Sons.

Assembly

Mrs Richards says that the Welsh Assembly Government “has been very supportive of our work and given us a sustainable waste management grant which has boosted the substantial commitment already made by the council to expand recycling. This has helped us to reach a 42% recycling level over the past few months.”

She added: “Councillors too have been very supportive and we now have two recycling officers working with schools and local groups to spread the recycling message.”

“The challenge of finding outlets for residual waste is continuing,” said Mrs Richards. “At present waste goes to the WRG landfill at Pen-y-Bont, Chirk. However, options for using the waste as a fuel are also being looked at. “We are part of the north west region waste group in Wales and we are looking at recommendations for where sites for waste management facilities could be accommodated.”