Recovery, treatment and disposal (RTD) project
Dorset County Council's long-term plans to manage waste that cannot be recycled or composted.
Residual waste is currently buried in the ground at landfill sites. This can be environmentally unfriendly by creating very powerful greenhouse gases, such as Methane, that contribute to global warming. European and subsequent national legislation are therefore making landfill an increasingly expensive way of disposing of residual waste.
Dorset's new draft waste strategy proposes viewing this waste as a resource that could be used to get value from, for example heat or power, instead of as a disposal problem. The new joint waste strategy has been produced with partner councils - Christchurch Borough Council, East Dorset District Council, North Dorset District Council, Purbeck District Council, West Dorset District Council and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council.
The county council, like others around the country, has been given allowances for the amount of waste it can dispose of in landfill sites each year. These are decreasing annually and councils could be heavily fined if they exceed these allowances. As well as paying to use landfill sites, plus all the related transport and staff costs, councils also have to pay landfill tax - currently £40 per tonne but also increasing annually.
The council is now preparing for a long-term alternative to using landfill sites. That includes meeting deadlines for applying for government funding now, and later drawing up designs and submitting planning applications so a plant can be up and running by 2016.
The council has recently submitted an outline business case to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to apply for over £80 million in private finance initiative credits to help fund the development and operation of a plant. This would see the council work with a private sector business partner to build and run a plant.
This outline business case has to specify a technology and a site for reference purposes, but these options are still open. The outcome very much depends on the results of the procurement which is scheduled to start later this year.
The council's Waste Local Plan identifies two sites for a waste management facility - at Hurn and at Winfrith, but it is likely that only one plant will be needed to deal with the county's waste. Hurn has been identified in an outline business case application to the government but the actual site could still vary, depending on the final business partner and their proposal
View the
Dorset CC Waste PFI OBC executive summary (pdf, 156kb) (opens in a new window) 
More information about the project will appear on this page.
