The local authority has paid £5 million to acquire a 62,000 sq ft factory building in Fengate, the industrial estate which is already home to its existing Materials Recycling Facility, which was itself subject to a £1 million modernisation completed earlier this year (see letsrecycle.com story).
A spokesman for the council told letsrecycle.com: “Peterborough is committed to trying to recycle more than 65% but we've accepted that we can't recycle everything so therefore we need an energy-from-waste plant.
“Our Dogsthorpe landfill is expected to be full by 2013, so we're looking at this site to make sure we don't have to use landfill.”
Capacity
The EfW plant would be designed purely to deal with Peterborough's municipal solid waste, with the spokesman explaining that “we initially thought its capacity would be about 65,000 tonnes, but we're just running the slide rule over it so it's going to be scaled to meet Peterborough's MSW needs. So, it could be less than that”.
Taking into account the cost of the council's planned food waste collections, the cost of the revamp of Peterborough's waste collection and treatment is expected to be up to £60 million.
Peterborough's waste management strategy, including plans to build an EfW facility, was approved in February 2007, and the spokesman said that the newly purchased factory was not the first location that had been looked at, explaining that “the authority had looked at another site but a commercial buyer came in ahead of us, that was last summer”.
Proximity
Commenting on the proximity of the new and existing locations, he said: “Even though they're on different roads, they're actually on adjoining sites; it was by lucky chance that a building of size became available.
“The new building was built in 2000, it wasn't necessary to make any changes to the actual building, so when we commission the new MRF, the idea is to put new equipment in and then move the technology from the current site across,” he added.
Peterborough city council's Cabinet member for the environment, Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald, explained that the purchase “means that we have avoided the additional costs and time delays that would have resulted if we had to buy a vacant site and construct a totally new building”.
The council now aims to submit a planning application for the new MRF by the end of September, with the plan being to do the same for the combined heat and power EFW “a month or so after that”.
Electrical
And, the proposed MRF site could also become home to the city's electrical appliance recycling programme, which was launched at a warehouse on nearby Newark Road in 2004.
The project takes waste electrical and electronic equipment that have been left at the MRF or collected through the council's bulky waste collections.
Items such as fridges and computers that can be easily repaired are then fixed, before being sold on at a low price, via an arrangement with local organisations, to disadvantaged families.
Anything that is beyond repair is dismantled and then its parts are recycled as much as possible; and the spokesman explained that the scheme was “doing so well that it does need a bigger space”.
Energy Park
The Fengate industrial park is less than a mile from the site where Peterborough Renewable Energy Limited (PREL) has proposed to build a £250 million 'energy park' which would include a gasification plant and a MRF and have the capacity to process up to 650,000 tonnes of municipal and commercial waste a year (see letsrecycle.com story).
That proposal, which was submitted for government approval in October 2007, represented a scaled-down version of PREL's original 2005 plans for a plant, which are currently awaiting a public inquiry after local councillors objected to the plans.
Food waste
With Peterborough having added glass to the list of household materials it collects via kerbside recycling in March, thanks to the technology available at the upgraded MRF, the spokesman confirmed that any new MRF would continue to process the same materials.
As a result, the next target for the council is to develop food waste collections, and, commenting on the progress of that development, he said: “We're doing some investigations and the two main options are in-vessel composting and anaerobic digestion.
“A team of members are reporting to a council working group, but it's more about what's acceptable to the public with regards putting it into bins,” he added.
Peterborough achieved a 43.75% recycling and composting rate in 2006-07, placing it in the top 40 best-performing councils in England.
Its collections are currently undertaken using an alternate-weekly, three bin system, with one wheelie bin for landfill waste, one for garden waste and the other for commingled recycling collections of aerosols, cardboard, cartons, food and drinks cans, paper, plastic bottles and mixed glass.
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