The County Council are currently drawing up plans to deal with what ends up in our bins after we’ve done our recycling, because it can’t go to straight landfill anymore after 2010. They want to start some small MBT (mechanical and biological treatment) plants. When they started thinking about it they were planning for three 70,000 tonne plants, but left over waste is dropping so fast that they will now only need two 75,000 tonne plants. Well done to everyone for recycling so much..
I recently visited the plant in the South of Scotland, which is like the ones planned for Cumbria. It was an industrial unit with a yard and offices. The bin lorry dumps waste and it is moved into a large hopper and dried by pushing cool air through it (this is the biological part). Then it is moved and sorted by magnets, separation drums, sieves etc and any metals, glass etc are taken out for recycling (this is the mechanical bit.). About 45% of what remains is then used as fuel (local firms can express interest in using it), the manager of Cumbrian operations promised me he would not try to dictate to Cumbria what the content of the waste should be.
How good this is environmentally depends largely on who uses the fuel and what fuel it replaces. Keep recycling as much as you can!
Jill Perry
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