Government

Viridor wins Dacorum council recycling contract

Dacorum Borough Council has awarded waste management company Viridor with a contract to sort and sell recyclable materials collected through the authority’s new recycling service.

The contract, which starts in November and lasts for three years (with the potential for a two-year extension), means that Viridor will be responsible for handling more than 18,000 tonnes of co-mingled recyclables collected in the area.

Co-mingling service 'will be TEEP'

Currently Dacorum council collects waste from residents using grey bins for residual waste and green bins for food waste, garden waste and simple cardboard. The grey and green bins are collected on alternate weeks.

Three recycling receptacles are collected weekly: a green box for mixed plastics, food tins and drinks cans; a black box for magazines and papers; and a basket for glass.

However, from November, the council will switch to a co-mingled system, seeing all dry recycling – paper, plastic, tins, cans, glass, and food and drink cartons (collected for the first time in the area) – placed in a blue-lidded wheelie bin for collection every two weeks. A kerbside caddy for food waste will be collected weekly. The existing green wheelie bins will be used for garden waste only and collected every two weeks.

Waste that cannot be recycling will be collected every two weeks in the grey wheelie bins, as it is now.

In a cabinet meeting in February, the council outlined that despite the UK’s transposition of the EU’s revised Waste Framework Directive (the Waste Regulations (Amendment) 2012) stating that by 2015, every waste collection authority must have in place separate collections for waste paper, metal, plastic and glass when they are necessary to ‘facilitate or improve recovery’ and are TEEP (technically, environmentally, and economically practicable), the council would be pursuing a co-mingled collection.

It argued that this new service would be TEEP for a range of reasons, including:

  • it would ‘enable the use of a conventional refuse collection vehicles meaning collections can continue until the vehicle is full (subject to the compaction ratio set) making this a more efficient collection process’.
  • it could avoid the need for manual handling of materials by collection crews, which ‘reduces potential injuries from materials with potentially sharp edges e.g. glass and cans’;
  • it would be ‘economically more efficient than the current weekly kerbside box system’; and
  • it could boost the council’s recycling performance 'from 46 per cent to 60 per cent', as well as 'allowing for the introduction of a weekly food waste collection service'.

However, the council has identified that it will need to ‘demonstrate where newspaper from a MRF is sent, to ensure there is a high value use of the material, with no problems being reported due to glass contamination’ and ‘define the end markets for all materials recovered through a MRF, demonstrating that it is technically practical to collect co-mingled recyclables’.

As such, under the new contract, Dacorum Council will collect dry recycling from households in Hemel Hempstead, Berkhampstead, Tring and surrounding villages, which will be taken to Viridor’s materials recovery facility (MRF) in Crayford . Mechanical sorting techniques and manual quality control will then be used to sort the waste ‘into high-quality commodities and sell to customers using its in-house Viridor Resource Management trading division’.

“Opportunities to increase the value we recover from our waste streams”

Graham Warren, Viridor Regional Managing Director, responded to the announcement saying: “Winning this contract reflects our desire to pursue quality and, by working in partnership with councils, create opportunities to increase the value we recover from our waste streams. I’m very proud of all the team who worked together to impress Dacorum and win this contract.”

Craig Thorpe, Group Manager for Environmental Service at Dacorum Borough Council, added: “Following an extensive evaluation Dacorum Borough Council were pleased to enter into a contract with Viridor for their receipt, processing and onward sale of our recycling material.

“From the beginning of our contract discussions it was clear that both ourselves and Viridor were committed to collecting and producing a product that is of good quality thus maximising our tonnage of material diverted from landfill and finance generated through material sold. “

From the end of August until October, the council will be operating an exhibition vehicle that will demonstrate the changes to the recycling system.

Read more about Dacorum Borough Council's switch to co-mingling.