In December 2006, SITA UK and Northumberland County Council signed a 28-year contract to manage municipal waste in the county. New investment in waste management facilities will increase recycling and composting rates to 45 per cent and result in just eight per cent of waste going to landfill.
The contract was awarded through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), supported with a £40M PFI grant from the UK Government.
Northumberland is a largely rural county made up of six district councils: Alnwick, Berwick, Blyth Valley, Castle Morpeth, Tynedale and Wansbeck.
With a population of 300,000 the county currently generates 170,000 tonnes of municipal waste each year.
New investment
A refurbishment programme has been underway since January 2007 with major upgrades to:
- 11 household waste recycling centres
- Three waste transfer stations
New developments include:
- Two state of the art household waste recycling centres
- One integrated waste management facility comprising a materials recycling facility and a waste transfer station
Work has also begun to extend the Tees Valley EfW (energy from waste) facility to handle the residual waste, which cannot be recycled or composted.
The future for waste management in Northumberland
In 2005, Northumberland achieved a recycling and composting rate of 30%, comfortably beating the national target of 25%. The county has ambitious plans to increase this to 45%.
This combination of high recycling rates and the recovery of energy from residual waste means that Northumberland will exceed national and European Union waste management targets.
A new £12M Integrated Waste Management facility will be developed on land at West Sleekburn Industrial Estate in the south of the county. Leading-edge techniques will be used to sort newspapers, magazines, cans and plastic bottles collected by the six district councils.
A new transfer station, which is part of the West Sleekburn facility, will handle all the non-recyclable waste, collected by the district councils in south east Northumberland. This material will be bulked-up and efficiently transported to the Tees Valley energy-from-waste facility where it will be thermally treated to generate electricity.
SITA Northumberland Limited
SITA Northumberland Limited has been set up to manage and finance this contract. The company is a partnership between SITA UK, Royal Bank of Scotland and AXA.
Contact
SITA UK
Ashley Court
Seaton Burn House
Dudley Lane
Seaton Burn
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE13 6BE
Tel: +44 (0) 191 2173070
Fax: +44 (0) 191 2173089
