Lancashire and Blackpool residents can count themselves among the world's greenest today with the opening of a revolutionary facility that will divert over 80 per cent of their household rubbish from landfill.
A ribbon was cut as the first load of black-bin waste arrived at Thornton Waste Recovery Park, near Blackpool – a landmark for Lancashire County Council and Blackpool Council's commitment to achieve new government targets to recover waste and radically reduce landfill rates.
The facility has created 160 jobs for local people and brings together two state-of-the-art waste treatment technologies used at only one other location in the world.
A large fully-enclosed composter will initially treat both green garden waste followed later in the year by the addition of food scraps, while a high-tech combination of mechanical and biological processes is used to produce a compost-like material from black-bag rubbish.
The facility at Thornton is one of two waste processing facilities being developed by Global Renewables Lancashire Limited (GRLL) to recover and process municipal waste over the next 25 years under a £2bn contract, which remains one of the largest investments of its kind in the UK.
County Councillor Albert Atkinson, deputy leader of Lancashire County Council said: "Today we're saying goodbye to large-scale landfill and welcoming a future in which most of our waste is reused. People in Lancashire and Blackpool can count themselves among the most environmentally friendly residents in the country.
"I'm proud that here in Lancashire we'll be among the top performing authorities in the country, and that we'll be achieving this without burning our rubbish, something the people of Lancashire feel very strongly about."
The waste recovery parks – the other under construction at Farington near Preston - will be operated by GRLL, a joint venture between AMEC and Catalyst Lend Lease, on behalf of the two councils.
Together, the two sites will handle over 500,000 tonnes of household waste every year.
Cllr Ian Fowler, Deputy Leader of Blackpool Council, said: “ The opening of the Thornton plant marks the end of many years of hard work to create a revolutionary facility.
"Thornton and its sister plant at Farington will put Lancashire and Blackpool at the forefront of waste recovery in the world, with as much waste being reused and as little sent to landfill as is achievable with today's technology.”
Martin Hopkins, chief executive of Global Renewables Lancashire, said: "After two and half years under construction, today’s arrival of waste has been a triumphant occasion for all those involved.