During March we formally opened our mixed plastics recycling plant in Redcar, Middlesborough. The plant is designed to process up to 20,000 tonnes per annum of mixed plastic packaging from both households and businesses, predominantly from co-mingled collections.. The plastics are sorted by polymer type and colour, and processed to produce product that replaces virgin plastic. The plant, the first of its kind in the UK, demonstrates our ability to innovate and develop market leading technologies. We have also invested heavily in advanced materials recovery facilities in East London, Aldridge and Manchester, which together provide over 850,000 tonnes per annum of processing capacity but, with the exception of supplying our Redcar facility, a significant proportion of the output material is exported.


The previous and current administrations recognise that more needs to be done to tackle waste food and food waste, and this work continues. Separating food waste from other waste streams makes re-use and recycling of these uncontaminated materials simpler and more efficient, creating a virtuous circle, but the management of food waste requires new collection and treatment infrastructure and systems; the waste is wet, heavy, and smelly, and can contain pathogens. Treating food waste by anaerobic digestion, the preferred solution, is a highly complex process, in part due to the waste being heterogeneous, and it is contaminated with plastic, glass/grit and metals etc. Small-scale local facilities


might be politically desirable but we are unlikely to see the wide-scale uptake hoped for because of the process engineering and small-scale challenges. As a national operator, we have developed a nationwide service for the collection of food waste in bespoke containers, addressing the problems above, and construction of our 120,000 tonne per annum anaerobic digestion plant in Cannock, Staffordshire, is nearing completion and will shortly be commissioned.


Investment in yet more infrastructure will enable us to manage more of these resources within our borders and we need to make this transition quickly. Addressing the fractures in the land use planning system is critically important but without access to borrowing, a recovery reinforced through a green revolution will slip through our fingers. The scale of investment needed to fuel this revolution is considerable, and whilst the increase in funding to the Green Investment Bank to £3bn, announced in the budget is welcomed, it is simply not enough. The huge investment needed in resource management and renewable energy will only come from a bank with full borrowing powers and delaying this until 2015-16 is a mistake and needs to be reversed.


ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |85|

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