Peterborough Council unveil new £1 million Material Recycling Facility

A £1 million modernisation at Peterborough City Council’s materials recycling facility (MRF) will be unveiled by Councillor Graham Murphy, Cabinet member for the environment, on Friday (16 May) at 2 pm.

The investment includes the region’s first installation of state-of-the-art technology, which has made it possible for Peterborough residents to recycle glass bottles and jars through their household green bins since the beginning of March.

The new equipment includes rotating cylinders called ‘trommels’, powerful magnets and photo-spectrum scanners that automatically sort materials. These machines and a strict quality control procedure, which includes hand-picking to remove unsuitable items, ensure that the materials sent for re-processing meet industry standards.

“The materials recycling facility is at the core of the city council’s success in being the top recycler among the UK’s unitary authorities,” said Councillor Murphy.  “The support of local residents means we set a new record by recycling and composting more than 46 per cent of household materials in 2007/08.

“The investment in new automatic separation equipment puts us in an ideal position to stretch our recycling performance even further towards 50 per cent this year.  This is important for everybody because landfilled rubbish damages the environment and local councils face heavy financial penalties if they don’t make massive cuts in volumes of waste being landfilled.”

Rotting waste emits methane, a climate change gas that is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

To reduce this damage the European Union Landfill Directive and UK legislation set targets for all councils to cut the rubbish they dump in landfill sites or face heavy financial penalties.  It means that, despite a growing population, Peterborough must reduce the biodegradable rubbish it landfills to just 34,135 tonnes 75 per cent of 1995 levels by 2009/10; to 22,736 tonnes (50 per cent of the 1995 total) by 2012/13;  and to just 15,909 tonnes (35 per cent of the 1995 total) by 2019/20.

The city council adopted a Waste 2020 strategy in February 2007 to meet these targets.  The strategy is based on public consultations that began in 2001 and the recommendations of a councillor-led cross-party Members’ Waste and Recycling Working Group, which was advised by independent experts.

The MRF, owned by the city council, is operated by Viridor Waste Management, a leading UK company in recycling and resource management with over 250 facilities for the treatment and recycling of materials from homes, offices, industry and construction sites.

Since opening in 1997, the MRF has recycled well over 100,000 tonnes of materials that would otherwise have been dumped in the Dogsthorpe landfill site.  Initially, the city council issued all households with a small green crate for the collection of recyclable materials.  In 2001 the crates were replaced with 240-litre green wheelie bins and in 2005 households were also issued with 240-litre brown wheelie bins for recycling organic garden materials.