New recycling plant could generate 550 lorry trips a week, create jobs and operate six days a week
Johnsons Aggregates & Recycling was founded by Steve Johnson in 1999. It is now looking to Whittlesey to expand. Picture; JOHNSONS - Credit: Archant
Buildings within the former Saxon brickworks in Whittlesey could become a huge waste recycling plant handling 500,000 tonnes a year.
It would operate six days a week, and generate 1100 lorries (550 in and 550 out) a week to the site.
Johnstons Aggregates and Recycling Ltd (JAL) will recycle bottom ash which is the residue left over from normal waste incineration.
The processes involved mean recycling the waste that does not burn, such as broken glass and metal.
What remains is a mixture of ash and secondary aggregate which is used in construction.
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Most waste will be imported from the west via the A1(M) and onto the A605.
JAL has put forward a scoping report setting out terms of an environmental impact assessment.
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The company was set up 21 years ago by Steve Johnson and employs more than 150 people in Nottingham and Ilkeston.
But demand is outstripping supply and JAL says both sites will shortly not be able to provide the high-quality incinerator bottom ash recycling that is required.
The site they have chosen in Peterborough Road were brickworks once operated by Hanson but these closed in 2011 as production switched to Kings Dyke.
JAL will lease part of the site from Hanson for both incinerator bottom ash waste recycling and construction and demolition waste.
Bottom ash is non-hazardous and once it leaves incinerators is heavily doused with water to reduce its temperature and minimise the risk of air borne particles.
HGVS will deliver it to Whittlesey where it will be tipped and doused again “to create a crush on the stockpile to prevent dust” and to allow it to “mature”.
Up to eight weeks later it is placed on a conveyor belt and taken inside to the main recycling centre.
Up to 98 per cent of incinerated ash bottom is recycled.
A mobile crushing plant will be used from 8am to 5pm, Mon-Fri. JAL says if they were to “do nothing” a significant quantity of waste “would not be pushed up the waste hierarchy. Virgin aggregates would not be displaced by high-quality manufactured secondary aggregates”.
