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28
May
‘Significant blockage’ causes increase in landfill at Allerton Park
A senior councillor has defended an increase in waste being sent to landfill from the Allerton Waste Recovery Park near Knaresborough.
The recovery park, which is based off the A1(M) and cost £1.2 billion to build, aims to divert 320,000 tonnes of waste a year from landfill.
However, according to a performance report to North Yorkshire Council’s Conservative executive, the amount of waste sent to rubbish tips increased sharply between October and December last year.
The report said 7.2% of waste in the third quarter of 2024/25 was sent to landfill compared with 0% in the same period in the previous year. The figure was also an increase on quarter two, when 3.3% of waste was sent to landfill.
According to the report, a “significant blockage of the ram feeder” at the plant caused a shutdown.
Councillor Greg White with electric vehicle chargepoints
Cllr Greg White, Conservative executive councillor for environment, said:
It’s down to unplanned downtime of the energy-from-waste plant in October 2024 which meant that the waste was sent to contingency delivery points, which included both landfills and other waste treatment facilities like other incinerators.
The contractor prioritises treatment facilities over landfill when they are doing this because it costs them more to send stuff to landfill. But there was insufficient capacity at the treatment plants to replace the around 6,000 tonnes per week that we had to get rid of when the plant was down.
Cllr White said that sending waste to landfill was “a last resort” for the plant’s contractor.
He added:
They don’t want to send it there. The contract makes it expensive for them to send it there, but occasionally they will have to.
But, Cllr Arnold Warneken, Green Party member for Ouseburn division on the council, said the figures showed that the authority needed a fresh waste strategy.
He said:
This latest news is just another example of how the incinerator is holding us back.
In 2043, We will be the last county in the country to have food waste collections. We currently have a waste policy that was written in 2006 and and in all that time, its targets have not been met. It’s time we did better. We need a proper waste strategy that prioritises reuse and recycling, and that places disposal to incineration or landfill as a last resort.
Rat attack
It comes after the plant was forced to shut down for four days in August 2024 after rats damaged cables inside the control cabinet at the plant.
The incident happened between August 24, 2024, and August 28, 2024.
It meant that the mechanical treatment plant, which sorts different types of waste such as recycling, general waste and organic waste, was forced to be taken "offline" for four days while repairs were carried out.
However, the energy to waste plant was unaffected and the council said no waste was redirected to landfill as a direct result of the incident.
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