Artist's Impression of Viridor's Beddington EfW plant

Viridor will manage the residual waste of residents in Croydon, Kingston, Merton and Sutton under a new 25-year contract with the South London Waste Partnership (SLWP), thought to be worth approximately £990 million.

The new contract, described as the ‘biggest in the councils’ histories’, will begin in 2017 and includes plans to process all residual waste in a new incinerator. Currently, all residual waste from the partnership councils is sent to landfill sites.

Plans for the 275,000-tonne plant to be built at Viridor’s existing landfill and recycling site in Beddington, were submitted to Sutton Council for planning approval in August of this year. A decision from the council is expected to be made in early 2013.

According to Viridor, if approved, the £200 million incinerator will provide annual carbon savings of 600,000 tonnes compared to landfill as well as generate 26 megawatts of electricity – enough to power around 45,000 homes. The facility will also treat around 75,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial waste.

However, if permission is not granted, Viridor will be obliged to find an alternative method of processing the residual waste.

‘Key milestone’

Viridor Chief Executive, Colin Drummond, welcomed the signing of the new contract yesterday (5 November), saying: "This is a key milestone in the development of this project. We are proud of being able to offer the councils a safe, robust and cost-effective solution to meet their needs and to complement their already successful recycling, composting and waste prevention initiatives."

Viridor already has two existing contracts with the SLWP (signed in 2008), including a 14-year, £112 million agreement for the ‘transfer, transport and distribution’ of up to 450,000 tonnes of waste and recyclables and an additional agreement to provide the SLWP’s composting, MRF and treatment requirements.

Councillor Derek Osbourne, Chair of the South London Waste Partnership's Joint Waste Committee, welcomed the residual waste contract, saying: "Our boroughs are already leading the way on green issues, but this contract is a major milestone that could bring world-class infrastructure to South London.

"Several years ago our four boroughs agreed we couldn't keep burying waste in the ground. We've listened to local people and chosen a much more sustainable way of handling waste. This contract will bring huge environmental benefits to all of the boroughs in our partnership and deliver considerable savings to the taxpayer when they're needed most.

"The new contract will be cheaper than current landfill disposal from day one, and over the 25-year lifetime of the contract it will save the four partner boroughs around £200 million. This money will help protect frontline services like schools, parks, libraries, social care and roads."

Overcapacity

If approved, this plant would be the latest of several energy-from-waste plants to get the go ahead, despite a recent report from Eunomia Research & Consulting suggesting that the UK could see overcapacity in residual waste treatment plants by 2015, if the current rate of construction is not curbed. The report suggests that due to increased emphasis on recycling, reusing and recovering material, residual waste rates are falling, leaving incinerators without the required levels of waste needed to produce efficient and cost-effective processes.

At the recent LARAC conference, councils were warned against over-investing in incineration and following the lead of the so-called ‘good recyclers’ of Europe by Vanya Veras, Secretary General of Municipal Waste Europe.

“They’ve built so many incinerators that they have overcapacity and have to feed these giants”, Veras warned, adding that in Belgium, where she’s recently moved, they’ve stopped collecting many types of packaging and have no room to increase recycling as the incinerators must be fed high levels of waste to run efficiently (and even when they run ‘efficiently’, electrical efficiencies of mass-burn incinerators range only between 15 and 25 per cent, according to consultancy AEA).

“Countries who haven’t gone down the incinerator route have better opportunities to make the most of resources”, Veras concluded.

Viridor will provide an interim service to the partnership beginning in April 2014 until the facility is operational in 2017.

Find out more about the Beddington facility or read more about the incineration process.