Recycling minister Lord Henley has put his ribbon cutting to the test over the past two days by opening a glass recycling plant in Sheffield yesterday (April 13) and an anaerobic digestion facility near Hull today (April 14).
The minister visited waste management firm Viridor in the North West of Sheffield to celebrate the official start of operations at the 100,000 tonne-a-year capacity glass recycling plant.
During his visit, he also formally opened a 100,000 tonne-a-year capacity materials recycling facility (MRF) on the same plot at Salmon Pastures.
Lord Henley had intended to officially open the glass recycling plant in December 2010 but was impeded by the deluge of snow that hit Yorkshireat the turn of the year. The rescheduled launch was held to coincide with the ministers fact-finding mission on waste and air quality in the Sheffield area.
Commenting at the opening, Lord Henley said: Recycling and effective waste management are becoming increasingly important to businesses and the general public, many of whom now realise what can and must be done to minimise waste to landfill and make better use of what weve got. The technology at this Viridor facility is highly impressive.
A spokeswoman for Viridor said that the company had invested 10 million into the Salmon Pastures site over the past 18 months, with 5 million of that being invested into the glass recycling plant.
Operations
The glass recycling facility was developed with materials handling equipment provided by Lincolnshire-based Mogensen, withthe aim of recycling 99% of material that enters the plant. Material is set to be provided to the plant from kerbside collections and MRF operations throughout the UK.
Meanwhile, the MRF was designed and built by German firm Eggersman Anlagenbau. Waste materials are first treated via mechanical means followed by quality control via manual pickers.
A magnet removes all material from the inputs, while optical sorting technology is used to separate cardboard, plastic and wood.
Viridor purchased the Salmon Pastures site in 2002, after Viridors parent company, Pennon Group, purchased previous owner the Parkwood Group from the Duke of Norfolk.
Bob Armstrong, Viridors regional manager responsible for the operation, said: The Salmon Pastures site is an excellent example of our continued investment in effective recycling operations to produce high quality materials from what would have previously have been wasted.
Mr Armstrong added that the opening event had enabled Viridor to explain how it works behind the scenes to sort and recycle a wide range of materials on behalf of its customers.
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In addition to opening the Viridor plant in Sheffield, Lord Henley is today (April 14) set to officially open GWE Biogas 10 million anaerobic digestion facility at Driffield near Hull.
It is intended to process 50,000 tonnes of food waste each year and this, in turn, is expected to generate 2.1MW of electricity.
GWE Biogas uses an advanced depackaging machine at the Driffield plant to separate food – such as out-of-date sandwiches – from its packaging, allowing it to process a wide range of food waste.
Ahead of the opening, Tom Megginson, managing director of GWE Biogas, said: Even the heat that is produced by the generators is re-used to heat the food waste as part of the pasteurisation process. Plus, the digestate that is left over once the waste has been digested is used as a rich biofertiliser on our farm.
The plant was developed with a 2.4 million grant from the Waste & Resources Action Programme and 750,000 from CO2Sense.
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