Proposed waste and recycling transfer station
A consultation recently took place on plans for a waste transfer facility on the Colomendy Industrial Estate in Denbigh.
The Council currently has two waste and recycling depots, in Ruthin and Kinmel Park in Bodelwyddan, but the facilities are outdated and are in need of major improvement works and investment.
Now we want to provide a central location for the Council to collect all waste and recycling and will allow us to sort and bail.
The development forms part of a larger development on the industrial estate being proposed by a consortium which is made up of the Council, Yard Space Wales Ltd, Henllan Bread, Lock Stock and Emyr Evans. The proposal would also see these firms expand their businesses on the estate and provide additional units to support existing and new businesses. The development will be a significant investment into the Estate and offers the potential to create a substantial number of jobs.
Subject to approval, we expect to start working on site in early summer 2020 with a view to having the depot operational by September 2021.
The proposed facility forms a major part of the way the Council intends to deliver and manage significant changes to its waste and recycling collections county-wide. The changes are expected to be introduced in the county in around two years’ time.
The setting up of a waste transfer facility will allow us to modernise the service and capture better quality recycling which will help fund the collection of all waste from residents in the future. It means that we can carry out the work of separating recycling and bailing materials ourselves without having to pay an external company to carry out the work.
We will also be working with Natural Resources Wales towards obtaining a permit for the facility. We would ensure that the facility was well-managed, would be kept clean and would contain odours within the facility.
Micro-chipping scheme underway in county pilot
Over 650 properties in the county have been part of a trial where microchips have been placed on food waste caddies.
Every week the council collects food waste through the orange caddy collection system. The food waste collected is taken to an anaerobic composting facility near St Asaph and turned into a valuable soil fertilizer that is used by North Wales farmers. The process also produces green energy for around 2,000 homes.
This trial is underway in four communities (in parts of Corwen, Ruthin, Prestatyn and Rhyl) and is part of the Council’s campaign to improve recycling rates, ahead of major changes to waste and recycling services in the county in 2021.
The information collected will inform the Council which properties have put out their caddy and which ones have not. It will help us to gather monitoring data quickly and efficiently so it is able to visit people who are not using the orange caddy system over long periods and offer support to encourage them to recycle. The Council already collects this information manually but it is time consuming and releasing this time would allow staff to talk to people who need more support to recycle. The data we get manually can also be inaccurate as it is not always possible to know which house a caddy belongs to.
The Council is working with a company called Schaefer who have developed the software and have offered the trial free of charge so the Council can explore the benefits of the new system and gain an understanding of feedback from residents, as well as see how well the software works.
If the system helps increase recycling rates the Council will consider expanding the trial areas in January.
Tony Ward, Denbighshire’s Head of Highways, Transportation and Environment, said: “Despite people in Denbighshire being amongst the highest recyclers in the UK, a quarter of the waste we throw away in our black bins is food waste. To hit our recycling targets set by Welsh Government we need to make sure all our food waste recycled and not wasted.
“Over the next 6 months we are launching a range of projects aimed at getting people to recycle food waste for the first time, as well as encouraging active recyclers to recycle even more.
“This is a ground-breaking project and we will be following the results of this initiative with great interest, to see whether it makes a difference to recycling rates and the public’s response to the scheme”.
The Council’s recycling team will be out and about in the communities over the coming weeks to speak with residents. All residents living in the trial areas will have received a letter informing them of when the recycling team will be available.