About us

About the Facility

Britaniacrest Recycling is proud to propose its Recycling, Recovery and Renewable Energy Facility (3Rs) on the former Wealden Works Brickworks site, off Langhurstwood Road near Horsham. The 3Rs facility will provide the first sustainable alternative to landfilling non-recycling waste in West Sussex by treating it as a valuable resource.

The proposed 3Rs facility will accept commercial, industrial, municipal or similar wastes and sort and segregate recoverable material such as metals, wood, rubble and some plastics using the latest sorting technology. The residual materials will be used to recover their energy using a well-established and proven thermal treatment process. Importantly, electricity will be exported to the local electrical grid - enough to power a small town with approximately 47,000 homes*

Energy-from-Waste (EfW) facilities provide a safe, technologically advanced means of waste disposal that reduces greenhouse gases, generates clean energy and recovers metals.

Modern EfW plants are clean and safe. They must meet strict emission limits - now placed on all industries - which are set out in the Industrial Emissions Directive and regulated by the Environment Agency in England and Wales.

*47,000 homes is based on an average domestic consumption of 3,600kWh per year (Source: Ofgem).

About Britaniacrest Recycling

Britaniacrest Recycling Ltd is a growing family business which today employs over 95 staff within the local area and was formed in 1993 by Ray Foss. The family brings significant experience in waste recovery, recycling and haulage, providing an affordable and professional skip hire and waste management services to its customers.

By utilising the then relatively new concepts of recycling from the outset, Britaniacrest Recycling has grown from strength to strength to become one of the South of England’s leading private waste management companies.

A passion for recycling and investing in modern waste technology

Passionate about recycling and protecting the environment for over 25 years, Britaniacrest Recycling has invested in safe recycling and processing infrastructure.

Britaniacrest is continuing to invest in recycling and waste treatment technologies and for the last three years, it has been working on proposals for its most significant piece of waste infrastructure, the Recycling, Recovery and Renewable Energy Facility (3Rs) at its Wealden Works site, off Langhurstwood Road near Horsham.

The 3Rs facility and the Wealden Works site

The Wealden Works site has a long industrial history dating back many years and is situated on the site of the former Wealden Brickworks off Langhurstwood Road. Today, bricks are still manufactured on the adjacent site and it sits alongside the mechanical biological waste treatment (MBT) plant operated by Biffa, with the Brookhurst Wood landfill site about 900m away. Landfilling operations have since ceased as this site is full and it cannot accept any additional volumes of residual waste - all that is being accepted are inert soils, as the owners are in the process of restoring and landscaping the large area.

Since 2015 the Wealden Works site has been safely handling and processing waste materials from local businesses and it has recently assisted Horsham District Council with its recycling vehicles.
Britaniacrest’s Wealden Works site currently has planning approval to handle 230,000 tonnes a year of various non-hazardous wastes. It is now receiving residual waste from the MBT plant; however, this proportion of waste is bailed-up and transported off-site by HGVs. Sadly, this valuable resource is then lost to the UK as it is exported for treatment at European energy from waste facilities - principally because there is lack of these facilities to treat it in the UK.

If granted planning permission, the proposed Recycling, Recovery and Renewable Energy (3Rs) facility will accept commercial, industrial, municipal or similar wastes and sort and segregate recoverable material such as metals, wood, rubble and some plastics using the latest sorting technology. The residual materials will be used to recover their energy using a well-established and proven thermal treatment process.

Electricity will be exported to the local electrical grid - enough to power a small town of approximately 47,000 homes. These activities will provide a sustainable alternative to landfill disposal or treatment at European energy from waste facilities.

Project Overview

Currently the UK sends over 12 million tonnes of household and commercial waste to landfill sites across the UK. However, across the south of England, there are now no landfills available to waste management companies between Dorset and the English Channel - with the exception of one location in Surrey.

West Sussex currently exports all its waste for disposal outside of the county as there is an absence of landfills or waste treatment facilities in the region. Today there is an urgent need to ensure that West Sussex, as well as the rest of the south of England, has the right level of infrastructure in place to deal with the growing amount of non-recyclable waste in the future.

Whilst the UK Government and public understands the importance of recycling and treating non-recyclable waste as a valuable resource to reduce landfilling, many waste facilities across the British Isles are only available to treat household (municipal) waste. However, more non-recyclable waste is produced by commercial and businesses entities, who cannot benefit from these municipal facilities.

Currently in the UK there are only a handful of treatment facilities that can efficiently and effectively process commercial and industrial waste - despite there being over twice as much business waste as household. This lack of waste infrastructure is particularly acute in London and South East England.

Looking to the future, if nothing changes, by 2030 there may be up to 6M tonnes of residual waste with nowhere for it to go locally for treatment. Even if the UK reaches its 65% recycling target by 2035, there is a real risk of an under-capacity of the UK’s energy from waste facilities, which is likely to be compounded by some older plants in the country having to come off-line.

More information on the dwindling landfill space in the UK and, in particularly, a shortage of current energy from waste capacity in London and the South East region is available here.

‘What others in the waste management industry are saying’

Biffa “Local availability problems will be experienced …and already are being in some areas, particularly London and the South East. There are nine counties already with no landfill capacity at all and five England regions set to run out within the next 10 years, leaving half of English regions with no landfill capacity after around 2027.” The Reality Gap 2017

Suez “Our projections show that there is a serious long-term shortfall in the UK’s vital waste management infrastructure and a potential disaster scenario now looming in the event of a hard Brexit…” David Palmer-Jones, CEO Suez recycling and recovery UK

Environmental Services Association (ESA) “The consensus position on waste treatment is that we will end up over five million tonnes short of energy from waste capacity by 2030.” “UK is sleepwalking into waste treatment capacity crisis” Environmental Services Association

Tolvik “For the optimist assuming a progressive increase in recycling, significantly greater large-scale energy from waste capacity, the existing Non-Hazardous Landfill capacity is likely to last until just after 2025….To bridge the gap between residual waste generated and the capacity available to treat it and also to provide a disposal option for specialist waste for which there is no alternative waste management solution.” Tolvik Report ‘Residual Waste in London and the South East - Where is it going to go….?’

The need for new energy from waste facilities

Energy from Waste (EfW) is a safe, environmentally sound and sustainable solution which plays an important part in the circular economy by generating energy and recovering metals and aggregates for recycling; burying waste in a landfill is not sustainable. When waste is buried in landfills it decomposes and generates methane and leachates can flow into nearby watercourses.

Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, regarded by many as over 30 times more potent than CO2. Therefore, with the objective of addressing climate change, the European Union has issued a directive to limit the landfilling of biodegradable municipal solid waste to 35% of the quantity landfilled in 1995.

EfW is a net reducer of greenhouse gas emissions because it does not create the methane that landfill produces, in addition to offsetting the need to burn fossil fuels in power plants.

The UK must catch-up to reduce landfilling waste

- EfW is a proven waste management solution used extensively worldwide.

- There are 780 facilities around the world safely converting more than 125 million tonnes of waste per year into electricity.

- Countries that extensively utilize EfW include; Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Singapore, and Japan.

- Many new facilities are planned across Europe, Asia and North America.

- The UK is catching up, but it’s still sending 12 million tonnes of household, commercial and industrial waste to landfill sites across the British Isles.