VIDEO: The Herald goes behind the scenes at Sherbourne Recycling, the new £65million plant that is dealing with most of Stratford district’s waste
Robots powered by AI are doing a lot of the hard work at the new high-tech rubbish recycling centre invested in by Stratford District Council.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens to your rubbish, the likelihood is that it will end up at Sherbourne Recycling, which occupies a massive site just outside Coventry city centre.
The new plant opened in August and now handles the majority of the district’s refuse. It turns residential mixed recycling into high-quality materials to be returned to the UK market, rather than being sent abroad.
In total it will process the annual rubbish generated by around 1.5million people.
Eight local authorities from across the West Midlands share the cost of the project – and eye-watering £65million – but this is spread over 25-years by the eight partners.
The facility is capable of processing 175,000 tonnes per year, which includes some room for additional capacity from other local authorities which will generate a supplementary income back to the eight partners.
All the household dry recycling collected in Stratford district will be delivered to Sherbourne – around 15,000 tonnes per year. The percentage of household waste sent to reuse, recycling and compost is circa 70 per cent, which the council is proud to say is one of the highest recycling rates in the UK.
Cllr Lorraine Grocott, Stratford’s environmental and neighbourhood services portfolio holder, said: “It is a state-of-the-art facility that is the result of many years of hard work and cooperation between eight West Midlands Councils. It is an impressive facility that shows the benefits of the public sector using leading edge technologies to deliver for our residents. It is a huge investment by all the authorities that will provide us with a solution to our recycling issues over the next 25 years.”
The Herald went to the plant to see it in action for ourselves along with other members of the press and council staff for a special open day last month.
Besides a very vague whiff of rubbish and the odd fly, the first thing to note is how amazingly modern and clean the huge plant looks.
Once inside a rather swish executive meeting room we all change into hard hats, high viz gear and special steel toe-capped boots (luckily no pictures are available of this) for a tour of the hangar-like interior.
Sherbourne business manager Layla Shannon leads the way, explaining as she goes.
"We separate material by metals, glass, plastics and fibres and then we break that down further into different grades of material," she explained.
The rubbish is swirled and escalated around a series of machines on the expansive plant floor.
The most mesmerising bit of the process is the robotic units that use high suction to target unsuitable material during the quality control process.
As the rubbish trundles along a conveyor belt the viciously quick suckers swoop down such up the unwanted bits and bobs and spit them out to the gutter at the side. The alien-like robots are able to pick 70 picks a minute and are both amazing and slightly terrifying to watch.
Explaining how they worked, Layla said: "They're talking back to the optics that are working a stage before them, they know what they're looking for, the AI is bringing the whole system together and they're targeting those key items for us that we don't want there - last little bits of film or tissues... we pull them off and then we've got exactly what we're looking for at the end."
Back in the meeting room, communications officer Anthony Hornsby explains the challenges ahead at Sherbourne.
“We are still in the commissioning phase and won’t be fully operational until spring 2024,” he said. “The challenge for us during this phase is to fine tune the facility to maximise performance, there is still a lot of hard work to be done, but we are excited for the challenge ahead.”
He continued: “We’re really pleased with how commissioning and testing is going so far, we’re already hitting close to the 99 per cent purity rates on some material lines, meaning we’re ahead of schedule regarding output of materials. There is still some testing and tinkering to be done to ensure we can do this continuously for the next 25 years, but we’re very pleased with where we are at currently.”
A final bit of praise was shared for the district and our south Warwickshire neighbours. “Stratford and Warwick recycling was one of the first to start delivering to Sherbourne Resource Park, and thus far we have to say the recycling looks really good,” added Anthony.
Recycling tips
“Clean, dry, and empty. These are the three golden rules to follow when recycling. Items need cleaning to ensure there is no food, liquid, etc left on/in them,” explained Sherbourne communications officer Anthony Hornsby. “Items also need to be dry, especially paper and card. And, they need to be empty, make sure there is nothing inside cartons, jars, or tins.
“These steps help reduce contamination and ensure your materials can in fact be recycled.”
Stratford’s throwaway success
Changes to Stratford-on-Avon District Council's rubbish and recycling collections introduced a year ago have been a success, with figures showing a reduction in the amount of rubbish being disposed of and residents recycling more than two-thirds of all household waste collected in the district.
In the first year of operation, figures show that 68 per cent of the district's rubbish has been recycled and 26 per cent less residual waste (the stuff that ends up in landfill) was collected.
During the period August 2022 to July 2023, 16,226 tonnes of residual waste was collected, which is 5,635 tonnes less than the same period the previous year.
The introduction of a separate weekly food waste collection service has seen 4,888 tonnes collected between August 2022 and July 2023.
