Southwark develops premier recycling facility

The Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) is being built on our behalf by our recycling and waste partners Veolia Environmental Services. The site is on the former gas works on the Old Kent Road. VolkerFitzpatrick has been appointed as the civil contractor.

The facility is expected to set the standard for urban waste and recycling management in the capital, hopefuly achieving our ambition to double recycling rates from just over 21 per cent at present to over 40 per cent by 2014.

Together with Veolia Environmental Services we have worked with the local community to ensure that they have been involved at every step. Due to the unique nature of the project and its inner city position, we have used advanced design features and stringent controls to minimise disturbances.

The new site will create local jobs throughout its construction and operational phases. It will also incorporate a state of the art visitor and waste education centre.

For the first time, all of Southwark's waste will be processed within the borough and no longer sent to regional facilities. 

The new plant's mechanical biological treatment centre will take residual waste from homes around the borough. It will first extract recyclable materials including metals and plastics and then break down the remainder using a process similar to composting. The end product can be safely used to fuel energy recovery or landfilled without releasing methane and other green house gases.

The Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) will include a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). The MRF will make possible standardised mixed collections of recyclables across the borough by providing the capacity to sort them for recycling. This will improve the efficiency of collections, allow an increase in coverage of door to door services and facilitate household collections of new waste streams, for example Tetra Pak.

For more information on recycling please visit our waste management and recycling section.