In recent years there have been significant changes in policy and legislation designed to limit the amount and types of wastes sent to landfill and to encourage an increase in treatment, recycling, reuse or recovery of waste. This is referred to as the waste hierarchy. There is a greater customer and public interest in sustainable methods of waste disposal. This has encouraged waste management companies like Augean to be innovative in their approach.
In 2008 Augean, at Port Clarence, began to develop the UK’s largest integrated specialist waste facility on a single site. The facility was planned to comprise up to 13 integrated waste management treatment activities seeking to optimise recovery and recycling from industrial wastes, particularly hazardous wastes.
A range of innovative technologies and waste recovery activities have been and will continue to be progressively commissioned at the site including soil treatment and recycling, waste sorting to optimise the potential for treatment and recovery of different waste types, energy recovery, and chemical treatments. Where material cannot be recovered treatments enable reduction of the hazardousness or of the volume of a wide range of contaminated materials rendering residues suitable for landfilling.
Augean seeks continuously to improve the services it provides by introducing new processes and technologies and regularly reviewing their provision so that they can continue to deliver the best environmental techniques and solutions for waste management. The company explores ways of improving existing techniques and ways of increasing the recycling and reuse of materials following treatment.
As part of the application of the waste hierarchy some materials defined as Low Level Radioactive Waste (LLW) may be suitable
for sorting and segregation, size reduction, decontamination treatment, conditioning or packaging within the Waste Recovery Park.
For example, metals that have become contaminated with low levels of surface radioactivity can be recycled. Waste which is suitable for
recycling in this way is separated out from other wastes at the Waste Recovery Park and is cut into pieces before being placed into large containers. The metals are then taken to a recycling facility, where the surface of the metal is removed by shot blasting, leaving clean metal beneath. The clean metal is then rigorously checked for any leftover contamination before it can be approved for recycling alongside other metals. A very small volume of radioactive waste remains for disposal in an appropriate facility like the landfill at Port Clarence.
