Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority

New services and facilities

The Procurement Programme has identified the need for a range of new waste facilities.

As part of the Project, MWDA has agreed a Planning and Sites Strategy that outlines the methodology behind the need and selection of sites. MWDA has drawn up plans to include more facilities for:

Composting
Household Waste Recycling Centres
Waste separation treatment
Energy recovery

Merseyside needs facilities that can treat that waste which is not, or cannot, be recycled and which would otherwise go to landfill. Residual waste can be treated in a number of ways:

Mechanical Biological Treatments (MBT) reduce the volume of waste by extracting moisture, recycle some materials and produce a compost like output and a refuse derived fuel (RDF). The compost-like output may be used in certain land restoration activities and the RDF can be burnt as a substitute for traditional fuels or landfilled.

Anaerobic Digestion (AD) and Gasification techniques can treat the waste to produce methane, which can be burnt to produce energy, and other useful bi-products.

There are also more familiar Energy from Waste (EfW) technologies which burn the waste to produce heat and power.

These facilities will be in addition to all the recycling which is happening at the moment and which will continue to be expanded in the future.

MWDA has not ruled in or out any particular technologies, provided they can meet certain key contract targets and do not pose an unacceptable risk to health or the environment.

Merseyside residents themselves helped shape the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy we are now implementing after taking part in a comprehensive consultation in 2005. Out of this consultation key themes emerged:

- 18.9% of you said that you would consider supporting an Energy From Waste facility

- 45.3% of you said that you would consider supporting a Mechanical Biological Treatment with energy recovery facility

- 22.4% of you said that you could consider supporting an Anaerobic Digestion facility.

Beyond this, the precise number and type of new facilities will be for the private sector bidders to propose and for MWDA and its technical and financial advisors to evaluate as part of the Procurement process.

We also need new Household Waste Recycling Centres for people to take their household waste, and we need to develop some of the Recycling Centres we currently operate.