Enquiry into the waste being burned in your Waste to Energy Facility in Edmonton including the percentage that is plastic and if they will change once the Energy Plant is in operation

Nature of Request
Miscellaneous
Case id
36

Request

Date received
1) How much plastic waste is presently being burned in your Waste to Energy Facility in Edmonton? How much percent of the burnt waste is plastic?

2) Can you also provide figures as to how much percent of the total plastic waste which households separate for recycling ends up being burnt in your plant? Have you got separate figures for the different London Boroughs which form the NLWA? I am particularly interested in the figures for Waltham Forest.

3) How will these figures change once the planned new Waste to Energy Plant will be in operation?

4) Are under the present operation any dioxins released into the environment? Will the planned new plant release any dioxins? What happens to the dioxins that are filtered out?

 

Response

Response date

Response supplied by LondonEnergy Ltd:

(1)    LondonEnergy (LEL) is contracted by the North London Waste Authority (nlwa.gov.uk) to accept waste collected by the NLWA constituent boroughs. LEL does not know the exact content of that material nor has any control over how it is separated before it reaches our facility where it is treated. We are therefore unable to answer this question on the basis that we do not hold the information that you seek.

(2)    As mentioned above, how the plastic waste separated at the doorstep is treated is not under the control of LEL. We do not receive mixed recyclates for incineration from NLWA nor do we receive separately sorted plastic waste for recycling. 

(3)    The new Energy Recovery Facility, being built by NLWA as part of the North London Heat and Power Project is not under the control of LEL. We do not hold information about the tonnage projections or data used by the NLWA for the new facility. NLWA would be best placed to provide this data to you.

(4)    LondonEnergy is regulated by the Environment Agency (EA). LEL complies with the conditions of its Permit as issued by the EA. LEL reports data as required by the conditions of its Permit. In the last period for which we have supplied the EA with data that the levels emitted we 0.01 ng/m3 against a permitted level of 0.1 ng/m3. (10% of the permitted amount)

In terms of the new plant and its dioxin handling, I would refer you to NLWA as we do not hold this information.

You may also like to know that the Government has recently published some consultations about ways to tackle packaging waste:

Defra, Introducing a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/environment/introducing-a-deposit-return-s…

Defra, Consultation on Consistency in Household and Business Recycling Collections in England: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/environmental-quality/consultation-on-cons…

Defra, Consultation on reforming the UK packaging producer responsibility system: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/environmental-quality/consultation-on-refo…

HMT, Plastic Packaging Tax: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/environmental-quality/plastic-packaging-ta…

The Plastic Packing Tax document may be of particular interest.