Yorkshire Water has agreed a contract with Suttons Tankers for the removal of sludge from its wastewater treatment sites that it claimed will cut the company’s carbon emissions by 15 per cent.
As part of the £60 million deal, 21 drivers and 33 vehicles have been transferred from Yorkshire to Suttons.
The contract will cover the removal of liquid sludge from more than 600 wastewater treatment sites operated by Yorkshire Water.
The sludge will be taken to one of 15 sludge treatment facilities, where it will be processed into raw sludge cake. This cake will then be transported by Suttons to the water company’s bioenergy generation plants, where it will be used to produce power for the same facilities from which it came.
Outsourcing the transportation, treatment and recycling of sludge to improve the efficiency of the processes was one of the strands of the company’s bioresources plan for AMP7.
Yorkshire Water currently treats around 150,000 tonnes of sewage sludge annually to produce renewable energy from the waste.
Last year, the company opened the country’s largest anaerobic digestion plant of its kind in Leeds, with the capacity to process 131 tonnes of waste each day. The bioresources market is estimated to be worth £1.6 billion annually in the UK.