West Wiltshire's waste will go to Europe

4.23.00pm GMT Tue 23rd Mar 2010

Sixty thousand tonnes of household waste will be converted at a plant in Westbury to 20,000 tonnes of fuel which will go to Germany or Holland to be incinerated.

The Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) plant at Brook Lane was originally planned to provide fuel from waste to go into the Lafarge cement kilns. Following closure of the cement works the project has been redesigned to produce a slightly lower grade fuel suitable for a waste to energy process.

The contract follows a similar scheme to take 50,000 tonnes of waste from Salisbury district to Slough for incineration.

As it gets delivered to the MBT plant the rubbish will be tipped into a reception pit before being transferred by crane into a fast rotary drum. Any oversize materials such as plastic and card will be separated out and may be added back into the process at SRF production stage or be sent for recycling.

The remaining waste passes into a stock pit before being distributed by crane into windrows in a large biotreatment hall.

The waste will stay in the hall for 10 to 14 days. Air will be drawn down through the waste and blown upwards in a controlled manner.

The temperature of the air and the rate of air flow will be managed to maximise drying.

The treated material will then be shredded and refined using a combination of rotary screens, air separation and magnetic and eddy current separation equipment to produce three streams of material:

• Ferrous metals for recycling;

• Solid Recyclable Fuel and fines (containing undersize organic material);

• Inert material such as glass and stones.

To keep the contract going it is necessary for the people of West and North Wiltshire to produce enough waste to keep the machines fed - if we were to reduce, re-use or recycle too much then the council would be in trouble.

Lugging our waste, even in a reduced state, across land and sea is also bad from an environmental point of view.

However the council will avoid paying landfill tax and landfill fines so there should be a net benefit to the taxpayer.