Going Green In Manchester
13 July 2010
The Costain team at the Greater Manchester
Waste project is now over the halfway mark in its efforts to help
make Greater Manchester a greener region.
Costain is undertaking the work under a £397million contract
signed in April 2009 to revitalise the municipal waste treatment
infrastructure for Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority
(GMWDA) - the largest municipal waste contract in Western
Europe.
The contract covers the design and build of 42 facilities spread
across 27 sites. These include 24 household waste recycling centres
(12 of which are being completely redeveloped), five Mechanical
Biological Treatment (MBT) plants, three In-Vessel Composting
plants, one Materials Recovery Facility, seven Transfer Loading
Stations and two Green Waste facilities.
By the end of May, Costain had handed over 25 of the facilities
as weather conditions that had hampered progress over the winter
improved. Indeed, one plant, the Bredbury Parkway household
recycling centre, was handed over no less than four months early. A
further five sites are scheduled to be completed by the end of the
year.
At the MBTs, work is now moving from the civils stage to plant
installation.
As rubbish moves through the treatment process metals are
removed for recycling, while paper and plastics are shredded to
form a fuel for power stations.
The remaining materials are fed through the anaerobic digestion
process to recover gas, which then powers on-site Combined Heat and
Power Plants to produce electricity to run the facility, exporting
the excess back in to the National Grid.
Increasing waste segregation capabilities and recycling is the
main priority at the household waste recycling centres, which are
being redeveloped to make them easier for the public to use, as
well as providing better working conditions for their
workforces.
With work taking place on existing sites throughout the region,
a major complexity of the project has been the need often to
construct new buildings in close proximity to existing facilities
that must be kept operational.
Project Director, John Boyd, commented: "Another commendable
achievement by the team has been maintaining all existing
facilities in a fully operational state, open to members of the
public and, in some cases, dealing with more than 500 vehicle
movements a day whilst completely rebuilding the facility."
GMWDA handles some 1.3 million tonnes of municipal waste per
year. A major aim behind the new contract will be to increase the
amount of material recycled from more than 30% last year to at
least 50% of all waste by 2015.