Kent renews ‘risk-sharing’ recycling contract after surpassing targets early

Viridor is set to continue its ‘risk sharing’ partnership with Kent County Council (KCC) by processing and selling dry kerbside recycling collected from households across West and Mid-Kent, after the county announced that it hit its recycling target a year ahead of schedule.

The contract will officially commence in July and will run for two years with the option of a further two-year extension.

Viridor has been working with KCC since its contract began in June 2014, collecting around 60,000 tonnes of recycling from households across the seven districts in Kent every year, which are sent to Viridor’s materials recovery facility (MRF) in Crayford, south east London.

Viridor says that it has developed an innovative partnership with a ‘self-help’ style contract to respond to the challenging commodity market conditions over the last year. The contract sees both parties sharing an element of the risk that fluctuating commodity market price movements deliver.

Chris Jonas, Director of Business Development for Viridor, said of the partnership: “By working together we are able to increase the amount of material that Kent recycles by using a state-of-the-art MRF and also increase the amount of high-quality recyclate entering the manufacturing sector in our ever more circular economy.”

A spokesperson for KCC added: “Following a comprehensive procurement exercise involving a review of our recycling and resource management services, we are delighted to award this contract to Viridor for the processing and onward sale of kerbside recycling.

“We have worked with Viridor over the last few years and appreciate they are positioned at the cutting-edge of new technologies and as a result the Crayford [MRF] enables us to recover the value from much of the material our residents place in their recycling bins every week.”

Kent surpasses recycling target while keeping three quarters of its waste in county

The announcement of the extension comes as a 2014/15 End Destinations Publication released by the Kent Resource Partnership (KRP), a partnership of all 12 of Kent’s district and borough councils and KCC, reveals that three-quarters of the county’s household waste and recycling is reprocessed within Kent, with 90 per cent staying in the UK.

The report also highlights that the partnership surpassed its recycling and composting target of 45 per cent a year ahead of schedule, while the amount of waste going to landfill fell by seven percentage points in the previous year.

Councillor Rory Love, Kent Resource Partnership Chairman, said: “2014/15 is the fourth year for which this partnership of all of Kent’s councils has compiled data on the end destinations of household recycling and waste. Our motivation is that openness and transparency with our residents is the surest way to gain and retain their confidence in our high-achieving recycling and waste resource services across Kent.”

Ray Georgeson, Chief Executive at Resource Association, added: “The KRP continues to lead the way with its transparent approach in informing residents on what happens to their resources as well as where it eventually end up. We applaud KRP’s efforts and continued support with this particular agenda and encourage other local authorities and businesses to adopt a similar approach through the Resource Association’s End Destinations of Recycling Charter.”

More information on the contract with Viridor can be found on the waste management company’s blog, while the Kent Resource Partnership Materials End Destinations and Annual Report 2014/15 can be downloaded from its website.