[Reposted from Jun 12] Pinkham Way Alliance: "OUR VISIT TO WASTE PLANT AT FARINGTON, LEYLAND, LANCASHIRE"

Link to Pinkham Way Alliance

"Pinkham Way Alliance (PWA) has been following the story of the Mechanical & Biological Treatment (MBT) plant at Farington for over a year. It opened in late 2010, and during the commissioning period, there were severe problems with the bio-filters.

"... From its inception, there have been severe odour problems at Farington. It seemed last year that the initial faults had been rectified, but in the autumn they returned. Since then the operators have tried various strategies, the last one being to raise the height of the five stacks on the building.

"... The activities at Farington are Materials Recovery and composting of various organic wastes. The plant accepts 3,000 tons of residual waste, 1,000 tons of dry recycling, and 1,000 tons of green and kitchen waste per week. The residual waste is sorted – by hand, by shifts of 200 or so employees – and the recyclables are sent into the dry recycling stream (thereby, presumably, contaminating it).

"We remarked that there had been some odours as we walked towards the building, and the receptionist agreed that there had been ‘some small problems’. However, the smell was not as strong as at the newer Southwark Integrated Waste Facility in London, which we visited recently."
 

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Global Renewables Lancashire

"In March 2007, Lancashire County Council, Blackpool Council and Global Renewables Lancashire Ltd. 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 facilities – one in Farington, (photos) near Preston, and the other at Thornton, (photos) near Blackpool, have been designed to treat over 300,000 tonnes per annum of household waste."