Specialist waste treatment and resource recovery company New Earth Solutions is celebrating the award of planning permission for another of their advanced composting facilities.
The new facility, to be developed in Avonmouth, will be developed to meet the composting requirements of Bristol City Council. The facility will have a design capacity of 50,000 tonnes per annum of which 30,000 tonnes will be required by Bristol City Council under the terms of a 20 year composting contract. The additional 20,000 tonnes of composting capacity will be made available to other local authorities and businesses within the West of England region.
The new facility is to be located adjacent to the Hallen Industrial Estate and will benefit from New Earth Solutions trademark technology. It will offer a 'state of the art' composting process encompassing full enclosure, automated process monitoring and control, and a comprehensive emissions management scheme.
Bristol City Councillor Judith Price, Executive Member for Homes & Streetscene, said: "Composting food waste has radically reduced the level of waste sent to landfill from Bristol.
The council's approach is now widely recognised as the way forward by most local authorities. The community has taken to separating its food waste easily and quickly and the scheme is running smoothly. The final piece in the jigsaw is a clean, low-emission, local treatment facility. This will save our food waste travelling some 260,528 miles each year to the current site at Dorset, equating to around 702 tonnes of CO2. We would like to welcome New Earth Solutions, and their innovative technology, to the region."
Planning permission was granted unanimously by the South Gloucestershire planning committee after many months of community engagement during which members of New Earth Solutions staff met with local residents to explain the proposal. A number of community engagement events were organised and these were complimented by a hosted visit to New Earth Solutions reference facility in Dorset.
The location of the new site has been considered in detail and selected on the basis that it is on land allocated for industrial development, has good road access and is separated by considerable distance from residential neighbours. Finding a site has been a challenging task since suitable sites for composting facilities in urban areas where most of the waste is produced, are generally scarce.
New Earth Solutions is able to produce purposeful outputs for re-use and recycling. The newly acquired Avonmouth site will, when developed treat 50,000 tonnes of kitchen and green waste arising from households in the former Avon area, producing 25,000 tonnes of high quality compost for use on agricultural land. This facility will be an essential public utility replacing outmoded and non sustainable methods of waste management such as landfilling.
Local Authorities are required to meet targets laid down by Government for the diversion of waste away from landfill and will incur financial penalties if these are not met. New Earth Solutions is delighted to be working in partnership with Bristol City Council in order to assist them in delivering their long term waste management strategy.