PLANS to deal long-term with waste in Leeds have taken a major step forward after council chiefs agreed to advertise a 28-year waste treatment contract.
The decision follows the council's success in securing £68.6m from the Government to contribute towards meeting the increasing cost of dealing with the city's household waste in the future.
The authority will look for a contractor to treat waste t
hat would otherwise end up in landfill after residents have reduced, reused and recycled all the materials they can.
The council has not made a decision on preferred treatment technologies and is remaining neutral on possible solutions.
Officers and councillors have been visiting various facilities across the country looking at alternative technologies, including energy from waste – an incinerator – mechanical and biological treatment (MBT) and anaerobic digestion.
Coun Steve Smith, executive board member for environmental services, said: "We are keeping an open mind about the type of technology that we might use to deal with the city's waste.
"New technologies are emerging and the solution has to be the one that protects the environment, delivers value for money and is acceptable to local residents.
"We asked residents and interested groups about what is most important to them when making this decision and this consultation will influence how we ultimately decide which process is best.
"Recycling remains a high priority for the council and we are committed to achieving a minimum of 50 per cent of the city's household waste by 2020. We are looking for a new treatment facility to deal with Leeds's non-recycled waste and significantly reduce the amount of waste currently sent to landfill, a major contributor to carbon emissions which have been linked to climate change."
All the options available to the council will be assessed in terms of environmental impact and value for money and residents will be consulted throughout the process.
A report discussed by councillors sets out the factors that residents felt were important when considering a contractor, which will influence the criteria used by the council when making the selection.
The council currently recycles and composts around 26 per cent of household waste. Last year the amount of waste landfill dropped by 17,000 tonnes. However, burying waste creates greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change and the council wants to significantly reduce the environmental impact of the waste Leeds sends to landfill.
The next stage of the waste treatment project will see the council advertising in the official journal of the European Union later this month then appointing a contractor by mid-2010 and having the new facility operational in 2014.
The council has signed up to introduce a range of new recycling services over the next four years, including doubling the frequency of the current green bin collections, introducing collections of garden waste and glass across the city and providing a weekly black bin collection of food waste.
A specific location for the waste treatment plant has yet to be decided but there is a shortlist of four potential sites, all of them in the Aire Valley, between Cross Green industrial estate and the M1 along the lower Aire Valley.
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