Haverhill’s new £2 million recycling centre at Homefield Road has been officially declared open today (6 November 2024) by Councillor Liz Harsant, Chairman of Suffolk County Council.
The new site, which has been welcoming visitors since August, replaces the previous centre at Chalkstone Way and has been designed specifically to make recycling and disposal of waste even easier and safer for the community.
Bookings for the new site are already exceeding the capacity of the old site. In its first two months, there were nearly 11,000 customer bookings – the old site would have been able to accommodate 8,000 bookings.
Councillor Chris Chambers, Suffolk County Council’s Cabinet Member for Transport Strategy, Planning and Waste, said:
“What a success the new site has been – with the number of bookings already outstripping what the old site could handle.
“With plenty more capacity available, the site is prepared for even more visitors as the local population increases, and more people choose to recycle at such a convenient and easy-to-use facility.
“The council remains committed to its ambition of protecting and enhancing the environment. Of course, we encourage people not to generate waste in the first place, by reusing or making different choices about the products they use. But for the recyclable waste that people do have, the new Haverhill site makes the process easy and convenient.”
Features of the new Homefield Road recycling centre include:
- A raised platform giving visitors an elevated position from which to safely dispose of waste – removing the need for steps
- A one-way system and easy-to-use layout, allowing customers to access clearly marked recycling bays
- No need to close the facility to replace full containers
- Improved accessibility and increased capacity for recycling and donating items for reuse
- Greater separation between public vehicles and larger vehicles
- Queuing capacity within the site and better access from the public highway compared to the old Chalkstone Way site
- The new site is 3.5 times bigger than the old Chalkstone Way site
The project sees Suffolk County Council and FCC Environment continue to work as part of the Suffolk Waste Partnership with West Suffolk Council. The Homefield Road site is operated by FCC Environment, which manages all of Suffolk’s 11 recycling centres.
Chris Ellis, Operations Director, Waste and Recycling Division, FCC Environment said:
“FCC Environment operates around 100 Recycling Centres up and down the country optimising recycling and reducing waste as we move towards a more circular economy but when a facility has been designed around not just the needs of residents but also operating efficiencies, it makes our job that much easier.
“The council, our teams and the contractors involved in this project have done an amazing job in getting this centre open and operational.
“We have been welcoming visitors from Haverhill and the local area for a couple of months now and we are told daily how impressed people are with the new facility and how simple and safe it is to drive in, drop off and drive out.”