The capacity of the Northacre facility, or any EfW facility, is based upon a combination of the thermal capacity of the plant, the amount of energy in the waste that it treats, and the number of hours per year the plant operates. Based upon NREL analysis of the variables, it is predicted the maximum likely waste throughput will be 243,000 tonnes per year.
It is estimated a person in the UK produces 409kg of waste annually. Of that, the Government estimates that 45% is recycled and 24% is sent to landfill. To put that into context, nearly 100kg of waste a UK adult produces every year is sent to landfill. When you consider the UK’s population is roughly 68 million, it means every year we send an estimated 6.8 million tonnes of residual waste to landfill every year. For business waste, recycling rates are better with over 50% being recycled.