Dive Brief:
- Barcelona-based Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC) has officially been granted a contract to build and manage a $20 million recycling plant in Dallas for 15 years, and possibly 10 years beyond, which could be valued at $300 million over its lifetime according to a press release. The plant is slated to begin operations at the McCommas Bluff Landfill in Jan. 2017.
- FCC will market and have exclusive rights to the recyclable material for the contract’s life. The single-stream processing plant — which will process up to 120,000 tons of recyclables annually — will have artificial vision and optical and gravimetric sorting machines.
- FCC, which operates more than 50 similar plants around the world, has secured two other U.S. contracts: a municipal solid waste contract in Orange County, FL, and a biosolids management contract in Houston, TX.
Dive Insight:
Dallas had spent two years working to develop a long-term recycling program to help achieve a 40% recycling rate by 2020. At the same time the city has been tied up in legal proceedings, with the most recent battle being a May lawsuit over Dallas’ single-use carryout bag restriction. Two years earlier, the city settled in a lawsuit, allowing haulers to dispose of waste at the location of choice.
In 2011, the city mandated that waste collected inside its borders be diverted to McCommas Bluff Landfill.
Much of the tension surround the plan is over the impact of low values of commodities. But entrepreneurs Carlos Slim and Bill Gates felt the investment in FCC is worthwhile, with Slim holding 25.5 % of the company’s share and Gates investing in a 5.7% stake in FCC.
