Celebrating seven years of recycling in Shrewsbury

Shropshire Council is celebrating the seven year anniversary of their environmentally-friendly integrated waste management facility at Battlefield Enterprise Park, Shrewsbury.  The facility was opened exactly seven years ago today (8 February 2005).

The £4 million facility was built to provide the public and waste collection providers with a location to bulk up waste and recycling and to enable more materials to be separated out for reuse, recycling and composting.  The buildings at Battlefield also incorporate a number of environmentally-friendly features, including energy efficiency measures, wildlife habitat, rainwater harvesting and renewable energy.

Councillor Mike Owen, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member with responsibility for waste and recycling, said:

“This award-winning facility has been an excellent investment for the council.  It provides a central bulking up point to reduce vehicle movements, and by helping to recycle more waste it reduces the cost of disposing of waste to landfill.”

Mal Price, Shropshire Councillor for Battlefield, said:

“This facility has been a resounding success.  It is easy to use and is vital for those who are keen to recycle whenever necessary.”

Donald Macphail, Managing Director of Veolia in Shropshire, who operate the site on behalf of the council, added:

“We provide recycling facilities for more than 30 different materials at the household recycling centre.  This includes garden waste, wood, electrical items, cardboard, scrap metal, batteries, tetra pak, soil and rubble.”

Each year since the site opened it has received more than 150,000 visits from local residents.

More than 50% of the 10,000 tonnes of the waste that is bought to the site annually by residents gets recycled.  In addition, the site acts as a bulking up point for all of the (ca 25,000 tonnes) of black bag rubbish, street litter, road sweepings and dry recycling collected from the Shrewsbury and Atcham area.

Further information

The Battlefield Integrated Waste Management Facility facility includes:

• Household Recycling Centre – where the public can bring waste and separate it into different areas for recycling
• Waste Transfer Station – where rubbish is bulked up into more economical loads before being sent onto landfill
• Recycling Storage Facility – which stores a range of recyclable materials
• Parking area for possible use by the waste haulage fleet
• Office building – for the administration team
• Education room – for visits by parties of schoolpupils
• Storage space – for bins, skips and boxes etc
• A dedicated area for taking street sweepings and litter. 

The facility is licensed to handle up to 100,000 tonnes of waste per year.  All waste handling is undertaken in the 5200m², 14m high building.  The facility design takes advantage of the natural slope of the ground, incorporating a split-level design for both public and commercial operations, and separating public and bulk waste-handling operations.

The facility includes a number of environmentally-friendly measures to minimise its effect on the environment and its surroundings, including:

• Energy-efficient lighting in the main building saves 60 tonnes of CO2 per year and is complemented by south-facing roof lights to maximise use of daylight
• Geothermal heating in the main office, incorporating over 300m of buried pipe, saves seven tonnes of CO2 per year
• 870 tonnes of recycled aggregate was used for the road foundations
• Rainwater is harvested and used for toilet flushing and wash down facilities, resulting in a further CO2 saving
• The facility has been designed using Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) to mitigate any impact on an adjacent watercourse using a storm water balancing pond, interceptors, buried storm water attenuation tanks and a constructed wetland which houses Great Crested Newts
• The exterior was designed to present an attractive view from the neighbouring enterprise park, Battlefield village and Battle of Shrewsbury heritage site. The landscaping was designed to enhance ecology along the Battlefield Brook watercourse and to link with surrounding developments
• The design incorporates tight controls on emissions to the environment, particularly odour, dust and bio particulates. It includes automatic fast-open/close doors and provision to retrofit an air extraction and filtration system. This is particularly important as it is situated alongside a Food Enterprise Park, where food processing companies will be located. This shows that well-designed waste facilities can happily sit alongside other sensitive developments
• The bulking-up of waste here also greatly reduce the environmental impact of transporting the waste by reducing haulage and fuel use.

In 2005 Battlefield Household Recycling Centre won a prestigious national CIWM Award for Excellence in Recycling and Waste Management.  It was named the winner in the category of ‘innovation in design of a waste management facility.