New household waste recycling centre in Blackpool, UK

This paper describes the design and construction of Blackpool Council's new household waste recycling centre. The scheme demonstrates the incorporation of sustainability considerations through design, construction and commissioning. Seeking to reduce the amount of household waste sent to landfill sites, the provision of a high-quality facility for recycling will encourage increased sustainability awareness and participation within the community. As a means of delivering a quality scheme, the challenge of ensuring high durability in combination with aesthetic and environmental enhancement has been met with innovation. Use of polymer fibre reinforcement in the heavy-duty apron slabs provides high durability under aggressive service loads. Elsewhere, incorporation of subsurface skips facilitates spatial optimisation and allows significant noise attenuation with minimal visual impact. Where possible, materials won from the demolition of existing time-expired structures were incorporated in the new scheme or distributed for reuse elsewhere.