What happens to general waste

To reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill, all waste that we collect from homes and schools in Southwark passes through our integrated waste management facility.

Landfills produce methane and other harmful greenhouse gases and sending waste to these sites is also very expensive.

All the rubbish we collect goes into our mechanical biological treatment facility. A combination of processes then sort and treat the waste in the following ways:

• mechanical separation of some recyclable materials, like scrap metal
• biological treatment to remove moisture from the waste before breaking down the organic, biodegradable components in a composting-like process to create a fuel that will recover energy

Any fuel that this refuse creates at the mechanical biological treatment facility is all sent to Veolia's energy recovery facility in Deptford.

Page last updated: 22 May 2017