Viridor receives $20M contract to serve East Sussex County

Viridor, Taunton, Somerset, England, has been awarded the contract to process about 50,000 metric tons of East Sussex County Council’s dry mixed recyclables per year.

The £20M contract (or about $25 million) will run for up to seven years from June 29, 2019. It will ensure that Viridor receives the county’s curbside recyclables, including paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, aluminum cans, steel cans and glass from all five districts and boroughs for sorting into high-quality commodities for onward sale into the recycling markets, Viridor reports in a news release about the contract.

The recyclables from Eastbourne and Hastings Borough, Lewes, Rother and Wealden District Councils will be sorted at Viridor’s Crayford Materials Recycling Facility with the plastics collected continuing its onward processing journey to the company’s specialist recycling plants, including Rochester Polymers Recycling Facility in Kent and Skelmersdale Polymers Reprocessing Facility in Lancashire.

“Our internal Bid and   Development Team’s submitted a high-quality bid and we are delighted to be awarded the contract to continue our work with East Sussex directly,” says Simon Prior, Viridor’s head of local authority development. “Processing the county’s high-quality recyclables provide high-quality resources to support the growing circular economy. In addition, our social value proposition provides the opportunity for local environmental-based projects to apply for grants from a new joint East Sussex-Viridor board.”

“We’re pleased to be joining forces with a company that has a proven track record of working with local authorities to process recyclables,” says Rupert Clubb, East Sussex County’s council director of communities, economy. “Along with our colleagues in local district and borough councils, we look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with Viridor, working to continue to ensure as much of the county’s waste as possible is recycled.”

The council will receive regular reporting on the quality performance of collected recyclables, which is vital information for the company to gauge and improve community recycling rates, Viridor reports in a news release. The contract runs through to June 2022 with an option to extend for two further periods of 24 months.