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What we do with your rubbish

Now that the landfill site at Paulsgrove is full it is being capped with soil and landscaped to create a new open space for public use.  The methane gas produced by the bio-degrading of rubbish is piped to a local plant and the energy produced goes back into the national grid, generating enough electricity to power the incinerator site and 20,600 homes.

Now, rubbish you can’t recycle or compost is sent to an incinerator  where the rubbish is burned and energy recovered from it. The Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) is situated at an industrial site in Copnor. It incorporates the latest technology, allowing the combustion of rubbish while keeping emissions to an absolute minimum and that meet the EC’s stringent safety requirements.  

The Environment Agency says that the levels of dioxins emitted by incinerators are so small they are very difficult to test for. We are talking about levels that are less than one tenth of a thousandth of a millionth of a gram.  Most dioxin pollution comes from domestic combustion, but did you know that more dioxins are released into the atmosphere through our bonfire celebrations on November the 5th, than from all the incinerators in the UK in a whole year? Check out the link in the right hand column. 

Here’s what happens at the Energy Recovery Facility…

The waste is delivered into a storage bunker at the ERF

• A grabber feeds it into a hopper where it drops down onto a grate
• As the grate turns the rubbish moves and is allowed to burn freely
• The ash passes through the ash discharger onto an ash handling system, which extracts metal for recycling
• The remainder of the ash is sent for recycling or disposal at controlled landfill sites
• Water is heated in tubes surrounding the furnace and converted into steam
• A turbo-generator uses the steam to produce electricity for export to the National Grid
• The gases generated, by burning at high temperatures, are passed through a series of filters to be cleaned before being released into the atmosphere. The emissions are monitored by the Environment Agency to ensure they meet the EC’s stringent safety levels
• The ERF burns 165,000 tonnes of rubbish from South East Hampshire every year (including Portsmouth’s rubbish) and the steam created from the burning rubbish generates enough electricity to power  the entire facility and 14,000 homes as well

In 2006 the Portsmouth Energy Recovery Facility was presented with a Design Award by the Portsmouth Civic Society. This brought the site to the nation’s attention, and was featured in BBC2’s Culture Show.

What happens to the rubbish we cannot incinerate at the ERF?

Some waste is not suitable for incineration or recycling, generally due to its bulkiness or the materials it is made from, and these wastes must go to various landfill sites. This would include some waste from bulky collections, fly-tipping and  general, non-recyclable waste from the Household Waste Recycling Centre.

As the Port Solent Landfill site has closed and there are no other landfill sites available in the Portsmouth area, it is sometimes necessary to use landfill sites outside the area.