MEMBER’S PRESS RELEASE: Herts food waste recycling plant nominated for Outstanding Achievement Award

Food waste to renewable energy company Biogen is delighted to be in the running for a CEEQUAL Outstanding Achievement Award, for its Bygrave Lodge anaerobic digestion (AD) plant in Hertfordshire.

The £12m state of the art plant near Baldock recycles 45,000 tonnes of food waste from homes and the food industry each year to generate 2.6MW of electricity for the grid – enough to power the nearby town of Baldock. The plant also produces a valuable biofertiliser for use on local farmland.

CEEQUAL is the evidence-based sustainability assessment, rating and awards scheme for civil engineering, infrastructure, landscaping and the public realm. The Outstanding Achievement Awards recognise projects that demonstrate pinnacle best-practice performance.  If successful, Biogen’s award would be the first of its kind for an AD plant in the UK and a first too for construction partners Toureen Group and designers Rolton Group. 

Biogen and partners Toureen Group and Rolton Group worked together during the design and construction phase of the AD plant to ensure the protection and preservation of the natural landscape and to minimise the impact of a waste facility on the local environment. 

Nigel Sheppard, Director of Projects at Biogen said:

Wherever possible opportunities were sought to enrich the area, for example, before the site was completed 14,000 trees were planted to form a screen and enhance the future landscape.  We also adapted a flood basin on site to create a pond habitat for amphibians and other wildlife and installed perching posts to encourage corn buntings, a species in decline, to return to the area.

In 2014 CEEQUAL acknowledged the efforts of Biogen, Toureen Group and Rolton Group by rating the Bygrave AD plant ‘Excellent’ for improving sustainability in civil engineering and landscaping.

The winner of the award will be announced at a ceremony in London on 28th November.

Bygrave 45,000 tonnes AD plant nr Baldock, Herts.