The Taunton-based company submitted a planning application for the £180 million proposal to Bristol city council last week (November 6).
Phil Bines, Viridor's project manager said: “There is a real need for this facility to provide local businesses and authorities with the capacity to meet their recycling needs and to efficiently recover value from their residual waste.
“Viridor is looking to invest without requiring long term contractual commitments from customers, to ensure this much needed capacity is available.”
The plant would be developed at the now derelict Sevalco site in Chittening, which was previously used to produce carbon black, in the industrialised area just to the north of Avonmouth
The company already has a waste transfer station at Filton, which is just six miles from the proposed Avonmouth development, and it provides waste and recycling collections throughout Bristol.
Energy-from-waste
The centrepiece of the proposal is an energy-from-waste facility, which would be used to treat non-hazardous residual waste from household, commercial and industrial sources.
Viridor said that the energy-from-waste facility will produce 30MW of electricity each year to be fed into the National Grid as and when the plant becomes operational. It would be accompanied by a dedicated facility to recycle residues from the energy generation process into aggregates for the construction market.
The company held public exhibitions of its proposal in July and also carried out a consultation with residents over the proposal, and, if planning approval is secured, it aims to have the plant up-and-running by 2012.
The proposal for the Avonmouth facility has been submitted just four months after the company's plans to build a 150,000 tonnes-a-year capacity energy-from-waste facility on the other side of the Severn in Cardiff was rejected by city councillors (see letsrecycle.com story).
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