Waste firm's £2.5m recycling facility is given the go-ahead

A Redruth-based waste disposal company has secured planning permission to build a £2.5 million recycling facility close to its headquarters, creating 20 jobs.

H&A Waste Services has already invested an additional £400,000 in a plot of land adjacent to its Cardrew Industrial Estate base, where it has received the go-ahead to begin development works.

It is to demolish an existing building on the site in December to make way for a new, purpose-built facility, fitted out with an automated line in which recyclable materials will be sifted out and sorted.

The company currently collects around 15,000 tonnes of waste annually from a 2,600-strong Westcountry client base, predominantly within leisure and hospitality.

Of the refuse it currently collects from clients, around 75 per cent is mixed, 'black bag' landfill waste, which H&A's managing director, Allan Holmes, said could be split open and sorted for recycling. He said: "Although we tend to recycle when we are at home, a lot of holidaymakers dispose of all their rubbish in one bag. We want to get all those recyclables out."

H&A, which is currently offering out the facility build contract to tender, aims for construction work to begin on site in January, with it operational within 12 months. The recycling facility will split bags and separate organic matter, aluminium, tin and plastics, with an eightstrong team of workers handsorting paper and card and sundry recycleables, from an elevated 'picking station'.

The materials will be sent for reprocessing along with other bottles, tins, plastics and paper collected by H&A in the dry mixed waste recycling bins its supplies clients with.

As well as selling the recyclate on as a commodity, H&A will save £120 on the cost of every tonne of waste it sends to landfill, also reducing its diesel costs and CO2 emissions from regular three-hour round trips to the nearest landfill site.The H&A recycling facility will be able to recycle up to 30,000 tonnes of waste annually, with the aims to achieve capacity within two years of its launch, also developing a 20-strong workforce on site within the next 15 months. The company already has a 55-strong workforce within its existing business, which was established 16 years ago to collect industrial clinical waste, after local authorities moved to outsource the service.

Mr Holmes added that he was confident that the company would achieve its zero to landfill target by 2014: "Although we will have some waste residues from the facility, there will be other alternatives to sending it to landfill, because the technology is moving forward so fast," he said.