Improvements to Council Site Will Open Doors for Food Recycling

The Brunel Drive depot in Newark is the base for the Council’s Environmental Services. This includes waste and recycling, parks, grounds maintenance and cleansing, fleet maintenance and some office accommodation. The site also contains the Council’s Museum Store, which contains close to 100,000 objects, with aspirations to improve visitor access to this facility.

There has been significant expansion to the services provided on the Brunel Drive site over the past several years with the delivery of an in-house garden recycling service in 2020, and, earlier this year, a kerbside glass recycling service. The Government has also set out requirements for a Food Waste Collection service to be provided by 2027 which will further increase the number of vehicles and equipment on site.

The agreed proposal will see the site combined with the adjacent Farrar Close, where the office block has become vacant following the re-absorption of housing services into the Council and the relocation of housing colleagues to Castle House in October 2023. This will allow for the necessary extra food waste vehicles and improve the flow of traffic as well as offering the potential for improving pedestrian access to the museum store.

Councillor Emma Oldham, Portfolio Holder for Climate and the Environment at Newark and Sherwood District Council, said: “Waste and recycling always features at the top of resident polling about the Council services which matter most to them. Because of this, the council is proactively evolving Brunel Drive to accommodate food recycling starting in 2027.

“Food recycling prevents decomposing food releasing harmful greenhouse gases like methane into the atmosphere and can generate renewable energy. The UK generates around 9.5 million tonnes of food waste each year, so ensuring we are best capturing and recycling this waste is another stride for our environment. We look forward to supporting our residents and making it easy for them to safely dispose of food waste.”

The glass bulking facility at Newark Lorry Park has been operational since April 2024, with temporary planning permission in place to allow time to monitor the suitability of the site. Since its installation, no complaints have been received from residents, and feedback from the Environment Agency has been extremely positive. Because of this, and with a forecasted £165,000 annual income which offsets some of the costs of providing the service, a planning application will now be prepared and submitted for the permanent siting of the facility here.

Alternative options discussed included incorporating the glass bulking facility into the Brunel Drive site which came with significant capital costs and concerns in relation to vehicle movements on site; seeking a new location for the glass bulking facility which was found to be financially-prohibitive; and taking the glass to the Veolia Materials Recovery Facility at Mansfield which would result in a loss of forecasted income.