Bryson Recycling has been awarded a contract worth up to £15 million to continue processing household recycling from over 250,000 homes in Northern Ireland.
The social enterprise, the recycling arm of the Bryson Charitable Group, which provides sustainable responses to social need, has been given the one-year contract by the arc21 waste partnership, with the possibility for extensions.
The arc21 partnership encompasses over half the population of Northern Ireland and accounts for over half of its municipal waste. The contract covers its six council areas in the east of Northern Ireland: Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council, Ards and North Down Borough Council, Belfast City Council, Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council, Mid and East Antrim Borough Council and Newry City, Mourne and Down District Council.
Through the contract, Bryson will continue to sort co-mingled recycling materials collected from wheelie bins from the six authorities. The social enterprise also plans to invest £250,000 in its Mallusk materials recovery facility (MRF) following the awarding of the new contract.
In addition to dealing with co-mingled waste, Bryson also currently provides a kerbside box service to some of the areas it operates in, and has been pioneering the highly-successful ‘Wheelie Box’ scheme in Northern Ireland.
Committed to local buyers
Eric Randall, Director of Bryson Recycling, said: “We are delighted to have won this contract which secures the jobs of 75 staff at Bryson and demonstrates that social enterprises can deliver high-quality, efficient and cost-effective public services.
“We currently process 60 per cent of the materials collected at the doorstep from Northern Ireland’s homes and look forward to continuing to help councils and residents recycle as much as possible. We are committed to working with local buyers and over 35 per cent of the materials we handle are recycled in Northern Ireland, helping to support local jobs and the economy.”
Ricky Burnett, Policy & Operations Director of arc21, added: “We are very pleased to have successfully concluded this procurement which will ultimately result in more material from all six of our constituent councils being recycled.”
More information about Bryson Recycling can be found at the social enterprise’s website.
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