Earlier this month, members and friends of Zennor WI shared a minibus and travelled up to St Dennis to visit the Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre. Since 2017, Cornwall Council has avoided sending waste to landfill by a combination of recycling and burning the rubbish from our black bags.
First, members were provided with hard hats, visors, hi-viz jackets and gloves. Under their hard hats they wore earphones, enabling their guide to make herself heard above the clatter of machinery. They then enjoyed a tour of the impressive works, including a glimpse of the vast hoppers being filled with rubbish by a steady stream of articulated lorries, and emptied by a huge claw which grasps the contents of the hopper and drops them into a furnace. They visited the control room where the claws are guided digitally by skilled operators, peered through glass into the furnace and saw the rubbish burning at 1,000° C; they then walked past the huge pipes which deliver the steam to drive the turbines. The resulting electricity is fed into the National Grid, and powers 21,000 homes.
The tour was followed by an interesting talk in the well-appointed visitor centre, The main message that the members carried away was that we should all reduce, re-use and recycle, and try to generate much less rubbish in the first place!