Multimillion pound AI-led recycling centre to be built in Bolton

Greater Manchester Combined Authority has announced plans for a state-of-the art AI-led recycling plant to be built in Bolton at an estimated cost of £17-£21m.

The material resource facility (MRF) is expected to be operational by September 2026, and will increase Greater Manchester’s recycling capacity in line with government recycling policy, allowing residents to recycle soft plastics like crisp packets more easily.

The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has said that by 2026 local authorities must be able to accept and separate dense plastics, as well as soft plastics and flexibles by the following year, which the existing MRF in Sharston is unable to do.

The current recycling centre in Over Hulton will be refurbished to accommodate the new MRF.

Current lack of capacity

Speaking to The Northern Quota about the project, David Taylor, executive director of waste and resources for GMCA, said: “It’s all about compliance with simpler recycling and making sure that the system we’ve got in place can deal with all of the commodities.

“The existing MRF that we have is now about 13 years old and it was never designed with the ability to separate out the full range of plastics.

“The other point is that, within the simpler recycling guidance, cartons have to be collected with the dry mix recyclables. In our case, food cartons like Tetra Pak are going in with the paper and card – our MRF isn’t able to deal with that.”

District-wide benefits

Mr Taylor is optimistic the development will help councils within Greater Manchester comply with the regulations.

He said: “All of the nine districts that are part of the GMCA arrangements across Greater Manchester will be able to collect the same materials.

“We can do consistent communications across the nine districts and hopefully make it easier for people.”

He suggested the development would provide a long-term solution to achieving recycling targets: “I think for Greater Manchester, compliance with simpler recycling is relatively straightforward because we’ve already got the four bin collection, which is DEFRA’s default.

“The only thing we had to do was get pots, tubs and trays into the mix, do something with cartons and then, in the future, it’s the soft plastics and flexibles.

“It’s been designed to take account of population growth, housing growth, and we’ve also tried to come to a view on how waste composition might change over the years once EPR (extended producer responsibility) is settled in.”

Through DEFRA, GMCA will receive a payment from the producers of packaging waste that will cover the cost of receiving said waste, transporting it and processing it through the MRF.

Mr Taylor said the money would allow GMCA to reduce the levy it imposes on districts for managing waste services.

He said: “We’ve got the ability to make these kinds of investments in the MRF because we’ve got this certainty of income which is coming through the DEFRA scheme.”

Potential drawbacks

He did, however, suggest the payment GMCA will receive through EPR may not be entirely accurate.

He said: “All of this is based on historical tonnage data, estimated costs, educated guesses in some cases, so what you’re getting is not your actual cost of handling that material.

“What we fully anticipate is that there are going to be winners and losers in this system, and at some point, DEFRA may change the way they’re working on this.”

Mr Taylor also suggested that the deposit return scheme, a cash incentive system that encourages people to recycle by refunding a small deposit on drink bottles and cans, may also have an impact on the total EPR sum.

He added: “How are residents going to respond to that? Are they going to start hoarding drink cans and bottles to take back? In that case, we may lose some of that material out of the kerbside collections, but it’s very hard to come to a view on that.

“DEFRA is modelling 90% capture of eligible materials through the deposit return scheme, but that’s an awful lot of people squirrelling away cans and bottles to get to that kind of level.”