Dealing with the waste we produce is a significant environmental and financial problem.
Across the UK councils are increasingly turning away from landfill and looking to incineration to deal with our waste problem. There are 44 incinerators across the UK with another 16 under construction. Last year they burnt 10.9 million tonnes of non-recyclable waste.
In Worcestershire non-recyclable ‘black bin’ waste is dealt with by an Energy from Waste Plant, where it is used as a fuel source to generate electricity.
This takes place at the EnviRecover Plant at Hartlebury in the northern part of the county. It opened in 2017 and is operated by Severn Waste Services on behalf of Herefordshire Council and Worcestershire County Council. In Worcestershire the county council is responsible for disposing of our waste, while district councils like Malvern Hills have responsibility for collection only.
Every year the Plant will deal with 170,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste from homes across Herefordshire and Worcestershire and another 30,000 tonnes of waste from businesses.
To ensure maximum efficiency when waste first arrives at EnviRecover, it is mixed to ensure it burns evenly. This is because some items have a higher energy value when burnt than others. For example plastic burns more easily than food waste.
It is then put onto the grate where it is burnt to heat water to generate steam, which then powers the turbine creating electricity.
If you would like to know more about the process in detail then you can read more here.
Disposing of our waste in this way has several environmental benefits including:
The Plant generates enough electricity to power between 32,000 and 34,000 homes – that’s the equivalent of powering more than 90% of households in Malvern Hills District.
It removes the need to burn 90,000 tonnes of coal which would be needed to generate the same amount of power
We are sending hardly anything to landfill. In fact the waste the Plant diverts from landfill would fill the Royal Albert Hall seven times over or 242 Olympic Swimming Pools
It would take 29 wind turbines to match the power EnviRecover can deliver
Water used to create steam is condensed and reused in the process
Ash generated at the end of the burning process is separated off-site for recycling into aggregate and building material
Ferrous and non-ferrous metals are removed from the ash and recycled
Emissions from burning the waste are strictly controlled to keep them within safe levels. You can read more about that here.
So do we no longer need to worry about recycling?
The short answer is absolutely not. The three Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle – remain as important as they ever were and we need to do much more to eliminate waste in the first place and push our recycling level to 50% and above.
Critics of Energy from Waste Plants claim they encourage waste, as a certain amount of rubbish needs to be burnt in order to make them viable. However, there are two key reasons why this doesn’t make logical sense – cost and environmental impact.
Firstly, it still costs Worcestershire County Council – and thereby all of us as council taxpayers – money to dispose of waste via the Energy from Waste Plant. In fact the county council spends more than £33million a year dealing with our waste. Therefore it doesn’t make financial sense to encourage people to keep generating lots of waste, regardless of how we dispose of it. If we can reduce our waste to a minimum in the first place we can free that money up to be spent on other key services like Adult Social Care and Highways.
Secondly, to ensure our planet is sustainable we need to move to a closed loop system of waste management, known as the circular economy. Put simply, we need to use less (reduce), ensure we use products more than once (reuse) or find other uses for them (recycle).
If we were to just abandon recycling and move to a complete system of energy recovery that would generate more demand for virgin material leading to all the associated environmental impacts in terms of quarrying, water and air contamination as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The resources themselves would also run out more quickly.
Many of you have asked us about how your non-recyclable waste is disposed of and hopefully this information has been useful to you. However, please do not stop the amazing efforts you have made to reduce your waste and increase your recycling.
Malvern Hills residents generate the lowest amount of waste per household in Worcestershire. Together let’s continue to lead the way and see if we can go even further in reducing our waste and maximising our recycling.
It's recycling week
From Monday (28 January) we will be collecting green bins/cherry sacks.
Remember:
Please put your bin/sacks out by 7am on your usual collection day
If your green bin is full then additional recycling can be placed next to your bin in a recyclable container such as a cardboard box
There is no limit on the number of cherry recycling sacks that can be put out for collection
Our recycling and waste reduction guide is available to view here
You can keep track of which colour bin/sack to put out by referring to the 2019 collection calendar here.
You can also use the online collection day look up calendar here.
Any disruption to our collection service will be reported here.
Struggling to move your bin? You may qualify for an assisted collection. Click here for more information.
From cookers to cupboards and mattresses to sofas our bulky waste collection service can deal with those difficult to move items so you don't have to. Click here for more information.
