Consultation opens on £39m plastics recycling plant
Anthony Lewis, local democracy reporter
A new plastics recycling plant in Merthyr Tydfil could create more than 100 jobs and reduce the local carbon footprint.
Residents are being consulted on £39m plans to construct a plastic recycling and processing facility on industrial land to the east of Goat Mill Road and to the west of the A4060 which has been set aside for employment and waste management use.
As well as providing around 110 jobs directly and 44 indirect supply chain jobs, the plant would reduce the amount of waste being disposed by landfill therefore reducing the country’s carbon footprint, the council said.
The plant would cover 14.6 hectares of land and around 150,000 tonnes of plastic waste a year would be recycled there with 155 tonnes of carbon saved annually which the company behind the plans said is the equivalent of 62,249 cars being taken off the road.
Planning application
The UK plastics recycling firm Jayplas is currently running a month-long “pre-application” consultation asking residents for their comments, before submitting a planning application to the council in December.
They said the proposal site has seen significant historical development over the years including rail lines, reservoirs and Dowlais Great Tip.
The council will hold its own public consultation period, once the planning application is formally submitted.
If planning permission is granted, construction of the plant will start in spring 2022 and take around a year to complete.
The pre-application exercise is taking place until Monday, November 15.
Two warehouses would house specific plastic washing and processing plant and machinery equipment and final products would be stored in “bales” before being moved on.
Established in 1975, Jayplas operates nine recycling and recycled product manufacturing sites across the UK.
The council said the benefits would include local employment opportunities for Merthyr Tydfil and the surrounding area during the construction and operational phases, bringing a large vacant site into use for employment, reducing the amount of waste being disposed by landfill helping the transition to a zero-waste economy, reducing the need to export waste plastics out of the UK and providing an additional source of recycled packaging to Wales.
More info on the plans is available here.
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Does this mean we will be keeping our own mess and dealing with it or will it mean more plastic being dumped in Malaysia shipped in from Wales? This really isn’t dealing with the problem of companies producing all that waste. I watched a program about plastic bottle waste and nearly half a trillion plastic bottles per year are manufactured, only a small percentage are recycled and the main culprit Coca Cola produces around 25% of that waste after decades of broken promises. Countries like Uganda and the Philipines natural habitats are getting absolutely destroyed because of this and wildlife… Read more »
The orthodox beliefs in the virtues of Recycling are wild exaggerations. To make any kind of progress we need reduction of uses of plastic, elimination of single use unless there is a clear pathway for reengineering at end of life, and defined plans for the termination of certain compounds where it is evident they are harmful when disposed by any means of destruction. It was believed that dumping certain non reusable plastics into CH&P plants was “a way out” to use their calorific value, but all we found was that these yielded effluents up the chimney that undermined any value… Read more »