Request for information about prior sorting of material before it reaches the ERF, minimum tonnages, carbon savings, emissions and pollution control of the replacement facility.

Thank you for getting in touch with the North London Waste Authority (NLWA) regarding the North London Heat and Power Project (NLHPP). To respond to your question about the sorting of waste prior to it being treated, NLWA is committed to driving up recycling rates. However, given the necessity to produce high quality recyclables that have a genuine market for onward processing, the extraction of quality recyclables from black bag waste is extremely difficult. When recyclable materials get mixed with black bag waste, including food waste, they become contaminated, making it very expensive to extract them and significantly reducing the quality of the recyclable material. There is not a plan to pre-sort residual (non-recyclable) waste that is delivered to the ERF as part of the NLHPP plans. That is one reason why NLWA works hard to encourage residents to put their waste in the correct bins to maximise the amount of material that can be sorted at materials recovery facilities and then recycled. The plans for the NLHPP do include extracting recyclable materials from bulky waste, fly-tipping and park collections at the Resource Recovery Facility (RRF). More information on the purpose of the RRF is available to read online here: www.northlondonheatandpower.london/faqs/about-the-project/what-is-the-r…              

In response to your question about providing a minimum tonnage of waste. There is no minimum required tonnage of waste for the seven boroughs and we do not expect to implement a minimum requirement. We have produced a waste forecasting model for the expected future tonnage of waste that will be treated at the new facility. This forecasting has determined the required size of the new Energy Recovery Facility (ERF). Our waste tonnage projections for the new facility take account the most recent actual waste tonnages which are available in the North London Joint Waste Strategy. This can be found on the NLWA website here: http://www.nlwa.gov.uk/governance-and-accountability/annual-strategy-mo…                

In response to your question about providing a minimum tonnage of waste. There is no minimum required tonnage of waste for the seven boroughs and we do not expect to implement a minimum requirement. We have produced a waste forecasting model for the expected future tonnage of waste that will be treated at the new facility. This forecasting has determined the required size of the new Energy Recovery Facility (ERF). Our waste tonnage projections for the new facility take account the most recent actual waste tonnages which are available in the North London Joint Waste Strategy. This can be found on the NLWA website here: http://www.nlwa.gov.uk/governance-and-accountability/annual-strategy-mo…                    

In response to your question regarding the current composition of the waste treated at the facility, a composition study of residual waste was carried out in 2016 which sampled waste from a representative sample of households within each borough. The results of this study can be found on the NLWA website here: http://www.nlwa.gov.uk/about/authority-strategies/waste-analysis-docume…;