The Waste Local Plan for Essex and Southend (2001) identifies six sites within the county, which are suitable for waste treatment facilities. Among these is Courtauld Road in Basildon.

 

Urbaser Balfour Beatty are proposing a new sustainable waste treatment facility for Essex and Southend at Courtauld Road. The new facility will use mechanical biological treatment technology. 

Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) is the name given to several processes that are used to treat waste. MBT involves mechanical and biological methods of treating the waste.
 
The mechanical part refers to the processes used for preparing and separating the waste. Mechanical techniques such as shredding are used to reduce the size of the waste. The biological part refers to a composting stage.
 
The MBT facility proposed by Urbaser Balfour Beatty will process residual (black bag) waste through a mechanical treatment stage where materials that can be recycled – such as ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastics and glass – will be recovered from the waste. What is left will be processed by a ‘biostabilisation’ process. This biological process will cause the mass of the waste to reduce and it will also dry it.
 
After six weeks the waste has become stabilised, meaning it won’t be able to break down, or decompose, any more and so it can be landfilled and/or used as a solid recovered fuel for use in energy plants. 

Urbaser Balfour Beatty has submitted a detailed planning application and environmental statement for the proposed MBT facility.