Artist's impression of the Trident Park incinerator

Waste management company Viridor signed a residual waste contract with Prosiect Gwyrdd on Tuesday (10 December), which will see the company treat the waste collected from the partnership’s five local authorities over the next 25 years.

The company was chosen as preferred bidder for the public-private partnership (PPP) contract in February after a three-year tendering process, beating off competition from Veolia Environment Services.

Under the contract, Viridor will receive around 172,000 tonnes of residual waste a year from Caerphilly Borough County Council, the County Council of the City and County of Cardiff, Monmouthshire County Council, Newport City Council, and the Vale of Glamorgan Council from September 2015, with full service starting on 1 April 2016.

The waste will be treated at Viridor’s energy-from-waste (EfW) incineration facility that is currently being built at Trident Park, Cardiff and due for completion in 2014.

Once up and running, the plant will be treating around 350,000 tonnes of waste (178,000 tonnes of which will be commercial and industrial waste from ‘across South Wales’) to generate 28 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough energy to provide 50,000 households.

Viridor has said it is also working with Cardiff Council on future plans for a district heating network which could increase the power generation through electricity and heat to 43MW.

Viridor Business Development Director Howard Ellard said “After a three-year tendering process, we are delighted to have signed this contract and look forward to providing this essential service to the project partners and their residents.

“The construction of the £223-million facility has already brought jobs and economic benefits to the area, and will provide around 40 permanent jobs (including apprenticeship opportunities). The project represents another key milestone in the development of Viridor’s PPP/EfW strategy.”

Committee ‘agreed to limit recycling’

Viridor’s Cardiff facility has been met with controversy since construction started last year, with local groups protesting about its proximity to the city.

The Cardiff Against the Incinerator (CATI) campaign was granted a judicial review in October, so that its concerns over the safety of the plant in the city’s Trident Park, near Splott, will be heard ‘in full’. The hearing will start next Tuesday, 17 December.

CATI claims that Viridor had started building the incinerator before ‘strict’ planning conditions had been met. These concerns were voiced to Cardiff City Council, but the council decided not to enforce the planning consent conditions.

Further, the group has alleged that the Gwyrdd committee ‘agreed to limit recycling and composting, to guarantee 35 per cent of waste goes for incineration’, fuelling fears that incinerators could soon b eburning recyclable waste to cope with decreasing residual waste rates.

However, a spokesperson for the Gwyrdd Project told Resource that this accusation was 'ridiculous’, and that the contractual measures 'predicate that at least 65 per cent of waste collected from kerbside should be recycled, eventually reaching 80 per cent by end of contract’.

Concerns over the UK’s reliance on EfW facilities to manage residual waste have been hotting up recently, with environmental consultancy Eunomia warning last month that the collective recycling rates for English local authorities in 2020 will be limited to 60 per cent as a result of the long-term commitments they are making to residual waste treatment (such as incinerators).

It added that the issue could be further exacerbated if local authorities are successful in reducing waste arisings.

Find out more about the Trident Park EfW facility.