SITA UK will this week (13 and 14 January) hold public consultations on its proposed plans to build a material recovery facility (MRF), a refuse derived fuel (RDF) facility and waste depot in Aberdeen.

The facilities are being proposed by SITA UK to fulfil Aberdeen City Council’s Waste Strategy 2014-2025, which seeks to boost recycling rates by processing co-mingled collections of recyclables via ‘the best available processing techniques, [to] achieve both quality and quantity in recycling’. (In May 2014, the council announced that it was to move from dual-stream to fully co-mingled collections to ‘significantly increase [its] recycling rates and… drastically reduce [its] landfill costs’. The council began trialling co-mingled collections of recyclables last year to help plan for the city-wide introduction of mixed recycling collections in 2015.)

To help the city council raise its recycling rate from 37 per cent to 56 per cent by 2020, reduce its £5 million Landfill Tax bill, turn non-recyclable waste into fuel, and comply with the Waste (Scotland) Regulations’ requirement of diverting all biodegradable municipal waste from landfill from 2021, SITA is proposing that a suite of facilities are developed.

Materials Recovery Facility

SITA’s plans reveal that it intends to build three developments at the Altens East Industrial Estate. The four-hectare site has been chosen as the preferred location for the development project as it is ‘close to the established industrial area’, is ‘some distance from homes’ and is able to ‘comfortably house the proposed facilities’.

The first proposed facility is a MRF capable of processing up to 70,000 tonnes of recyclable materials a year.

The facility would use ‘modern technology’ and ‘high-tech equipment’ to sort and separate the mixed recyclate waste into constituent parts (such as paper, glass, cans, plastic etc), although employees would also be needed to ‘operate and maintain the equipment and to provide sorting quality assurance’.

Refuse derived fuel facility

All of Aberdeen City Council’s residual municipal (black bag) waste collected from homes (approximately 71,000 tonnes), along with non-recyclable waste from the MRF, will be sent for processing at a new RDF facility at the estate. Once there, the waste will be shredded (and have any remaining metals removed for recycling) before being baled, wrapped, and exported to incinerators overseas to act as a fuel source.

Although Aberdeen City Council is looking to also develop an energy-from-waste facility in the city, the RDF facility would be used to process residual waste in the interim period, until such a plant comes online.

New waste depot

Both the MRF and the RDF facility will be housed in a single building on the western side of the estate, while a new waste depot and office block will be located on the east side of the estate. All of the council’s 50 waste collection vehicles would also be housed at the new depot.

It is hoped that moving the waste depot from Powis Terrace to the Altens East Industrial Estate will ‘make the process of dealing with the city’s waste more efficient and cost effective’ as it would reduce the amount of money, time and carbon emissions spent on transporting the waste across the city.

Moving the waste depot would also free up land needed to support the development of the Third Don Crossing – an infrastructure project that involves building a single carriageway over the River Don.

Colin Forshaw, SITA UK’s Operations Manager in Aberdeen, told Resource: “The primary reason for wanting to build these facilities is to try to find a more sustainable way to deal with Aberdeen City Council’s residual waste.

"Currently, 56 per cent of total waste arisings goes to landfill (around 71,000 tonnes), so we’re looking to firstly increase the recycling of waste (currently around 37 per cent) to meet the targets the Scottish Government have set, and significantly reduce the amount of waste to landfill as well.

"So, the MRF will handle one aspect by increasing recycling, and the RDF plant will tackle the other aspect by generating a fuel that we’ll then look to move outside the area and send for heat and power.”

It is expected that around 40 new long-term jobs and 60 construction jobs would be created if the waste project goes ahead.

Members of the public are now being asked to attend a public exhibition at the Thistle Hotel in Altens, Aberdeen on Tuesday (13 January) and Wednesday (14 January) and a further exhibition will be launched next month as part of the three-month consultation period.

Once all the responses from the consultation have been collated, SITA UK will submit it plans to Aberdeen City Council’s Planning Committee. This is expected to be 'sometime in spring'. If approved by the council, the facilities could be up and running in 2016.

Find out more about the proposals for Altens East Industrial Estate.