Cornwall

SITA Cornwall and Cornwall County Council (CCC) are working together to deliver a sustainable and integrated waste management solution for the people of Cornwall.

Cornwall, like many other counties across the UK, is producing more and more waste. Every one of Cornwall’s 550,000 residents produces around half a tonne of waste and this is increasing every year.

Faced with these challenges CCC looked to the private sector to help it achieve not only government targets but also its own aspirations for waste management. The result is the 30 year private finance initiative (PFI) contract, which was awarded to SITA UK in 2006.

Over the next 30 years SITA UK and CCC will be working together to deliver a sustainable integrated waste management solution for the people of Cornwall. This means that recycling and recovering energy from waste will take precedence over landfilling waste.

Community recycling centres
SITA Cornwall is now operating 10 community recycling centres in Cornwall. The centres take a wide range of items and are useful for those things that aren’t accepted by collection services or bring banks.

People are already starting to see several changes at the local recycling centres in Cornwall and these improvements will help to achieve a recycling rate of at least 50 per cent.

New recycling centres will be developed at Falmouth, Launceston, Newquay, Penzance, Scorrier, St Austell and Truro. Existing centres at Bude and St Erth will be re-developed and Bodmin, Helston, Liskeard and Saltash will be refurbished.

SITA Cornwall will also recycle 95 per cent of the dry recyclables that are received from the district councils through two sites in Bodmin and Pool.

90 per cent of the green waste collected in Cornwall will be composted.

Waste transfer stations
Waste transfer stations are strategically located so that transporting waste is done in a way that minimises the impact on communities and the environment.

As a result, SITA Cornwall will be redeveloping, developing temporary or replacing waste transfer stations across the county. Once development of all the sites has been completed, the county’s transfer stations will be able to manage 150,000 tonnes of waste each year.

Landfill sites
SITA Cornwall took over two landfills at Liskeard and Redruth from 1 November 2006. These landfill sites are being re-profiled to create additional void space.

Energy recovery centre
SITA Cornwall plans to develop a new energy recovery centre, which will handle 240,000 tonnes of waste. The centre will produce around 16.6 MW of electricity which will be exported to the national grid. Heat will also be generated and provided to neighbouring users and 60,000 tonnes of bottom ash will be recovered that can be used as an aggregate in road building.

More information

If you have any queries, please contact us at cornwallhelpdesk@sita.co.uk or call us on 08456 300 300.