Lisa Chambers, portfolio holder for waste, Suffolk County
Council
We are proud of our recycling achievements in this county.
Thanks to the efforts of Suffolk residents, we are now the fifth
best recycling county in the UK, with over half our household waste
recycled. But we don’t want to stop there, we want to do even
better and aim to get recycling up to 60% by 2015. We recognise
that won’t be easy in this difficult financial climate, but we want
to work with communities on innovative ways to achieve our 60%
recycling ambition.
Despite our amazing efforts,
we are still left with at least 170,000 tonnes of rubbish a
year. This currently goes to landfill, but that cannot
continue. We are running out of landfill space, it is
extremely costly (because of hefty landfill taxes) and more
importantly environmentally we can do better.
We needed to find an alternative, and after much research we
have decided on energy from waste, which uses tried and tested
technology to provide a cheaper, greener solution to disposing of
the waste which cannot reasonably be recycled, reused or
composted.
This technology puts the waste to good use as a fuel to generate
electricity and contributes to our aim of making Suffolk the
greenest county. Over the 25 year life of the contract, it will
also be at least £350 million cheaper for Council Tax payers than
continuing to landfill.
We have signed contracts with SITA UK to build and run an energy
from waste plant at the former highways depot at Great Blakenham,
near Ipswich.
In July planning permission for the new facility was granted and
in September the Environment Agency issued the permit SITA UK will
need to run the site. The permit has strict operating and
environmental conditions attached, and it is only issued when the
Environment Agency is sure local people and the environment will be
protected and safe.
Work will start on site in the new year, and the building should
be open by December 2014.
To find out more about SITA UK go to:
www.suffolkefw.co.uk