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 Target: to recycle 40% of household waste by 2005  |
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Target: to recycle 40% of household waste by 2005 |
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18 March 2003 Onyx invests to expand recycling facility Such has been the success of Hampshire’s waste recycling programme, that waste contractor, Onyx Environmental Group, has just invested over one million pounds in an expansion project at Portsmouth. Hampshire residents have responded so well to the recycling campaign, that the Portsmouth Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) had reached its operational capacity in just five years. In order to cope with projected demand, it needed to increase its capacity by 30,000 tonnes. Since it opened in 1998, the MRF has processed a staggering 271,000 tonnes of dry recyclable material – plastic bottles, paper, cans and card – collected from Hampshire’s doorsteps or via the network of Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs). The investment programme has increased the MRF’s capacity to sort and separate recyclables to an enormous 72,000 tonnes each year. The installation of a range of more efficient equipment, including a new state of the art Trommel, has been completed. The Trommel is a huge interior drum which acts as a front line filter at the plant, separating plastic bottles and metal cans from paper. One of the most efficient means of separating paper from other dry recyclables, the Trommel works by allowing materials of different sizes to drop through holes along its length as its rotates – cans and plastic bottles at the front, followed by paper products, leaving oversized materials such as cardboard to be filtered through the end. The project was part of Onyx’s ongoing investment in Hampshire’s waste infrastructure under Project Integra – a joint strategy with the county’s 14 local authorities who work together with Onyx to ensure that Hampshire’s waste is disposed of in the most efficient and environmentally friendly way possible. Whilst the upgrade at the Portsmouth MRF took six months to complete, the facility remained operational throughout, ensuring that recyclable materials have continued to be processed and returned to the product stream. “The expansion of the MRF’s capacity was a vital part in the strategy to meet the growing demand for recycling in the county,” explains Mike Thomas, recycling manager at Onyx in Hampshire. “The recycling campaign in Hampshire has been hugely successful, residents have embraced the concept, and we are currently recycling approximately 22% of the 852,000 tonnes of waste produced by us all during the course of a year.” Hampshire’s recycling capacity is set to expand later this year when the construction of the second MRF at Alton is complete. Together the Portsmouth and Alton MRFs will enable a massive 157,000 tonnes of recyclables to be processed each year. Ends For more information please contact: Jo Garland 01962 764000 |
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