Cory Environmental wins Gwynedd waste contract

Cory Environmental has a won a three-year interim residual waste contract with Gwynedd Council.

The contract, which has a three-year extension option, will start in January 2014 and will see 30,000 tonnes of black bag waste per year disposed of at Cory’s Hafod landfill site in Johnstown near Wrexham.  

It is expected that the temporary arrangement will be replaced by an energy-from-waste solution, currently being procured by the North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Partnership (NWRWTP).

Steve Rogers, Senior Development Manager for Cory Environmental, said: “We have been able to provide Gwynedd with a cost-effective disposal solution that will help them manage their residual waste prior to the commencement of the North Wales Residual Waste Treatment solution.”

Medwyn Williams, Senior Manager from Gwynedd Council, added: “Cory Environmental submitted a solution which will meet all our requirements for the disposal of the waste that we cannot compost or recycle between now and when the new regional North Wales Residual Waste Treatment facility becomes operational in a few years’ time.”

NWRWTP EfW contract

The residual waste facility (set to be operational by 2017) forms part of a Welsh Government-sponsored project to divert approximately 150,000 tonnes of non-recyclable residual waste from landfill in the five NWRWTP local authorities: Flintshire County Council, Conwy County Borough Council, Denbighshire County Council, Gwynedd Council and the Isle of Anglesey County Council.

The government’s planned investment over the 25-year timeline of the project is £600-800 million.

Although a final decision has yet to be made on the winning bid, it is thought that the contract will go to Wheelabrator Technologies Incorporated, which became the sole remaining bidder for the contract after SITA UK pulled out of the procurement process in January 2013.

Opposition

The project has not been without opposition, with over 5,000 residents in Connah’s Quay, where the incinerator is expected to be situated, signing a petition opposing the plans and calling for "greener methods of disposal".

Further fears centre around the growing overcapacity of incinerators in relation to falling residual waste figures. Concerns of the UK and Europe’s preference for long-term incineration contracts have mounted recently as both Eunomia and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives have released reports on overcapacity, the latter stating that the numbers of incinerators in the UK and EU have the capacity to burn ‘more than the non-recyclable waste generated’ and could ‘threaten’ recycling rates as recyclable material would be needed to ‘feed’ the plants. (The most recent Eunomia ‘Residual Waste Infrastructure Review’ highlights, however, that the risk of overcapacity in Wales is not as severe as the risk in England.)