The new facility includes:
The new facility will receive and process the following waste materials:
T W Services has secured planning permission for its 20-acre site adjacent to the disused Richborough power station to provide an energy park and comprehensive waste recycling service for East Kent householders and business.
New East Kent energy park and waste plant means zero to landfill
"We can proudly say that we are providing a local solution to a local problem," says Spencer Ray, director of family-owned TW Services.
"Over the past three years we have worked hard on planning and strategic issues concerning the newly formed East Kent Waste Partnership Project. Planning permission for our site means we are moving rapidly towards zero waste to landfill," Ray says.
The new energy park means additional jobs for the area, not just in construction of the new facilities, but also at T W Services. Ray expects the new site to generate 60 jobs locally.
"Unlike other proposals to develop an energy park at Richborough, we are starting now. We have already done the planning: we've got it approved and we start building today," Ray says.
"We are providing modern, purpose designed facilities creating the essential infrastructure needed to increase recycling capacity on the site that will handle waste from Thanet, Dover and Canterbury for the next ten years and beyond," Ray says.
T W Services' new site near Sandwich can handle 750,000 tonnes of waste each year. The site provides a total solution for East Kent, handling municipal waste, food and green waste, construction and demolition waste, commercial and industrial waste, wood and hazardous waste. "Everything will be recycled and we aim to have nothing going to landfill," says Ray.
The site will have an aerobic digester – essentially a very large compost bin – that converts food and vegetable waste into a compost-like material that can be returned to land with the gas produced by the process used to generate electricity to power the site.
"We will also use waste wood to produce a renewable fuel for power generation – nothing need go to waste anymore," he says.
T W Services' new facility is an integral part of Kent County Council's waste management plans to dispose of all Kent's household waste within the county. T W Services will take the waste collected by Veolia Waste Management, which collects waste in Dover and Shepway, and from 2013 green waste from Canterbury and Thanet, for recycling.
The anaerobic digestion plant will provide much needed extra capacity to recycle green waste. This means more households in East Kent will have their garden waste and their food waste collected and recycled in the company's new anaerobic digestion facility so helping divert waste from landfill.
Kent County Council fully supports T W Services' plans. "It is a fundamental plank of
East Kent Joint Waste Contract 2010 and the development of successful and efficient
waste services in the area in the future," says the council in its note on the planning application.
TW Services' new facility will make a "significant contribution towards our aim to further increase recycling and composting and to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill," the council says.
The new site also means that waste currently transported across Kent will now be handled locally with fewer vehicle journeys thus reducing CO2 emissions.