Residents of the Boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Lambeth, Wandsworth and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are now benefiting from having their rubbish treated at a new Energy from Waste (EfW) Facility which has recently been built alongside the River Thames in Belvedere, Kent.
Western Riverside Waste Authority, which provides waste disposal services to these four London boroughs, entered into a long-term waste management contract with Cory Environmental Limited in 2002. This contract is helping the Authority realise its aim of sending no waste to landfill and providing a greener future for management of the Authority’s waste.
Under the Authority’s waste management services contract with Cory, it has now replaced landfill with EfW combustion as the prime treatment method for its residual waste, i.e. that portion of waste which cannot be reused or recycled. The Belvedere EfW plant is owned and operated by Riverside Resource Recovery Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cory.
Construction of the £570 million Facility – which provides for the combustion of waste and the use of the heat from the process to generate electricity through steam generation in boilers – took three years and it has been processing waste from the Authority’s area since hot commissioning started in February this year. It is the largest EfW Facility in the UK and one of the largest in Europe, which will manage an average of 585,000 tonnes of residual waste each year and will export 66MW of electricity to the national grid, enough to power over 100,000 homes – around a quarter of the total number in the Authority’s area!
Even the principal residue from the Facility (bottom ash) is recycled into road building and construction aggregate, having first had any metals removed from it which are then recycled. Residual gases, formed during the combustion process, also go through numerous cleaning processes to ensure that stringent EU emission targets are met.
Whilst a small proportion of the waste delivered to the facility may arrive by road, the majority will be brought in by river, from within Greater London. Much of this will be transferred to the facility by Cory via the Authority’s river-based Transfer Stations in Wandsworth and Battersea, saving over 100,000 lorry movements from the capital’s busy streets each year. Cory transports the waste by barge and has been operating on the river Thames for over 100 years.
Tim Ahern, Chairman of the Authority, said: “The Authority is committed to moving material up the waste hierarchy and continues to strive to minimise, reuse and recycle as much waste as possible. However there will always be residual waste and it is pleasing that this is now being utilised for energy recovery, rather than being disposed of to landfill.”
The new Facility will, for decades to come, ensure a secure and environmentally sound disposal method for the Authority’s residual waste and it benefits from a guaranteed level of capacity at the facility. However, the Authority and its constituent councils remain free to reduce or recycle their waste without limitation and it is not required to supply any guaranteed level of tonnage to the facility, or make any minimum payment.
For more information on waste treatment in the four boroughs, please contact:
David Jones-Owen, Deputy Clerk
Western Riverside Waste Authority
Tel: 020 8871 7032
Email:
DJones-Owen@wandsworth.gov.uk