FOR the past five years Thurrock Council has been taking its dry recycling to Nordic recycling Ltd at Tilbury Docks, but the company has now gone into liquidation, forcing a change.
The seven-year contract was due to end in April 2017 and in March last year Sita UK, bought Nordic and told the council its contract would be unaffected by the change.
Thurrock is charged £14.52 a tonne for recyclable material processed through the contract – although if contamination rates rise above eight per cent the price rises to £92.68 a tonne, meaning a normal load costing approximately £116 to process costs £741 instead.
The council delivers up to eight recycling loads a day.
Changes in market conditions since 2010 means the price of recycled materials has fallen although the council’s costs are only inflation linked.
At one point early in the contract the contamination rate rose above eight per cent, but the council acted quickly and soon brought it back down within acceptable limits – rejecting contaminated bins.
However, in early June this year Nordic/Sita asked for an urgent meeting with the council to discuss the future operation of the Tilbury site where they said they were consulting with their workforce on the future operations of the site.
The company also told the council they had directed all other waste away from the site because Thurrock was contaminating all material! This had not been communicated before.
Thurrock agreed to drive down its contamination and has acted decisively so nearly all loads are now below the eight per cent.
Yet Sita have continued with their closure plans at Tilbury and offered Thurrock the option of using their Barking site at £61 a tonne. The council has negotiated a cheaper – £55 per tonne – rate with Bywaters in Canning Town.
Cllr Gerard Rice, the council’s portfolio holder for environment, said: “We believe Sita were looking for excuses to close their Tilbury site but have been gradually lowering their offer to use Barking.
“The problem is they have let us down once, how can we trust them again – plus the fact we are looking at what we can do legally to recoup the difference between the £15 we were paying and the £55 we are paying as from this Monday.
“Part of the Bywaters deal is that they accept the same co-mingled one-bin recycling as Tilbury, so our residents do not have to learn a new system.”
He added: “Unfortunately, because we now have to take the recycling to Canning Town, our collections will now start from 6am – so the trips into London will avoid the major traffic problems.
“And the change also means we have had to cancel our pilot kerbside textile recycling scheme, not something we would want to do, but it is not something the new facility can cope with at such short notice.”
