Lancashire:
The UK’s First UR-3R™ county
In March 2007, Global Renewables UK, Lancashire County Council and Blackpool Council signed what was then the UK’s largest waste PFI contract; a £2bn, 25-year agreement to process the household waste of 1.4m people in Lancashire.
This move heralded the start of a new approach to waste treatment in the UK, where the rising costs of landfill and the growing awareness of the damage this method of disposal causes to the environment, has forced a radical rethink of how we handle our waste.
Two UR-3R™ facilities – one in Leyland, near Preston and the other at Thornton, near Blackpool – will treat over 300,000 tonnes per annum of household waste, reclaiming recyclablesfor reuse and transforming the organic portion of the waste into a high quality compost-type product called Organic Growth Medium (OGM) which will be used to plant 2.5m trees over the course of the contract. Underpinning this activity is a committed waste minimisation and education campaign; working within the community to help reduce the amount of waste we create and educate children about the importance of recycling.
If you want to find out more about one of the facilities or our work in Lancashire, use the navigation buttons below.
The Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS) was launched on 1 April 2005. The Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme introduces significant and innovative changes in waste policy and practice for the diversion of biodegradable municipal waste from landfill.
It is intended to provide a cost effective way of enabling England to meet its targets for reducing the landfilling of biodegradable municipal waste under Article 5(2) of the EC Landfill Directive.
Allowances were allocated to each waste disposal authority to a level that will enable England to meet its targets, as a contribution to the UK targets, under the Landfill Directive.
The Environment Agency, the monitoring authority for England, will use the mass balance process to monitor the amount of BMW sent to landfill in any year by each waste disposal authority (WDA).
WDAs will be required to provide quarterly returns to the Environment Agency within three months at the end of each quarter via WasteDataFlow.
A fixed penalty of £150/tonne will be incurred if a WDA breaches its landfill allowances target in the scheme year.
www.defra.gov.uk - Landfill Directive
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