Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion County Councils have become Wales’s first local authorities to let contracts under a new waste framework agreement.

The agreement allows local authorities to buy waste disposal services from one of seven suppliers, consisting of two UK and five export solutions, and was developed with environmental consultants Eunomia Research & Consulting in response to the ‘financial and performance pressures faced by local authorities in Wales regarding the management of their municipal waste’. It is being run by Pembrokeshire County Council with support from Eunomia, but is open to all councils in Wales.

First contract details

Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion County Councils have let the first contracts under the framework agreement to Potters Waste Management. The contracts will see residual waste processed at sites at Pembroke Port and in Lampeter to remove recyclable materials before the waste is shredded, baled and wrapped at Pembroke Port to create a refuse-derived fuel (RDF) that will be shipped to Sweden to power combined heat and power (CHP) incinerators.

Eunomia estimates that by utiilsing the excess capacity in Swedish incinerators (rather than sending the waste to landfill or recovery facilities in the UK), the councils could save more than £350,000 a year. It added that as CHP technology is still relatively new to the UK, sending RDF to Swedish incinerators “enables far more energy to be extracted from the waste compared with most UK incinerators”.

The 15-year contracts, which are expected to create 11 jobs at Pembroke Dock and in local haulage, will commence on 1 March 2015, with the first RDF export taking place at the beginning of June.

‘Simplifying the process of tendering for residual waste treatment’

Eunomia Director Joe Papineschi, who is leading the project, commented: “Local authorities in Wales have significant challenges to meet on shrinking budgets. Using the framework agreement simplifies the process of tendering for residual waste treatment, and makes some very competitive prices available both from UK and overseas facilities. There are real opportunities for councils in Wales to quickly and cheaply access very high-quality facilities.”

Richard Brown, Pembrokeshire County Council’s Head of Environment and Civil Contingencies, said the contract provided an opportunity for achieving cost savings for the council while also creating jobs and boosting recycling rates.

He added: “It provides a flexible, low-risk, value-for-money approach that enables us to divert waste from landfill in the short term, but avoids committing too much waste to incineration in the long term as recycling rates escalate.”

Councillor Alun Williams, Ceredigion County Council's portfolio holder for Waste and Recycling, also commented, saying that the local authority has always been “keen” to work together with neighbouring councils and is “very happy to be doing so with Pembrokeshire on this occasion, thereby saving money for both councils”.

The framework agreement is the latest waste-related agreement to be launched in Wales, following on from the Welsh Government setting up a framework for the purchase of waste and recycling containers.

The Scottish Government is also promoting councils to work together on waste, and last year launched a new materials brokerage service, run by a Zero Waste Taskforce, to ‘help the public sector get a better deal for the recycled materials collected from their communities’.

Councils wishing to get involved with the Welsh residual waste framework agreement should email Daniel John at Pembrokeshire County Council.