120,000 tonnes of landfill will be burned annually

The North West Region Waste Management Group (NWRWMG) - comprising seven councils from Moyle to Strabane - is contracted to burn at least 120,000 tonnes of household waste that would otherwise be destined for local dumps each year.

NWRWMG have already shortlisted two bidders - Greenstar Holdings Ltd and the Brickkiln/United Utilities/Sisk Consortium - to develop a combination of Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) and Energy Recovery technologies to treat waste which can’t be recycled.

Separately, local waste firm Brickkiln have also applied for permission to build an independent gasification (MBT) plant in Maydown and proposes a two acre facility housing a two line gasification plant with associated ancillaries for the generation of power.

The contract to develop the public NWRWMG Energy from Waste (EfW) plant - considered a type of incinerator by the EU - is worth £500m and will eventually produce power for local water heating schemes and connection to the main electricity grid.

The development is essential as the European Landfill Directive requires that by 2020 the amount of material being sent to landfill must be reduced to just 35 per cent of 1995 levels.

And Londonderry householders remain the biggest bunch of household wasters in Northern Ireland recycling just 30 per cent of their rubbish, according to a 2010/11 NI Municipal Waste Management Statistics Annual Report.

Derry City Council also had the highest rate of household waste sent to landfill at approximately 70 per cent.

Mr Attwood explained: “Energy from waste, whether through incineration, gasification or other technology, is a tightly regulated means of treating the residual waste remaining after as many recyclates as is practicable have been extracted from the waste collected by municipal authorities through either kerbside or bluebin collection and MBT.

“Each of the three Waste Management Groups has gone through a rigorous process of assessment to identify the solutions that it believes best meets the waste management needs of its constituent councils.

“The main benefits of the Waste Management Groups’ preferred solutions are the reduction of waste going to landfill and the 5-7 per cent contribution that front-end processing (Mechanical and Biological Treatment) would make to our overall recycling figures.

“It is vital that we achieve our landfill diversion targets if we are to avoid heavy infraction fines from the EU. “The EfW component of each project has the potential to power district heating schemes or to be fed back into the main electricity grid, thereby reducing the use of fossil fuels and bringing us closer to our stated goal of becoming a low carbon economy.

“Beyond the specific benefits to waste management, the projects will also create jobs in both their construction and operational phases.”