A Taunton-based UK recycling and energy-recovery company that runs energy-from-waste plants and large plastics recycling facilities.
Viridor is a UK resource recovery and waste management company. Its name comes from the Latin for "to become green". Today it concentrates on two things: energy recovery, where waste that cannot be recycled is burned to make electricity and heat, and plastics recycling, where used packaging is turned back into raw material. It describes itself as one of the UK's leading resource recovery and waste management companies. Its energy sites include Ardley, Beddington, Dunbar, Exeter, Peterborough, Runcorn, Trident Park in Cardiff, Glasgow's Renewable Energy and Recycling Centre and Avonmouth, and it shares the Lakeside plant with Grundon.
The business began in 1956 as Harrison Western Limited and later became Haul Waste. It joined the utility company Pennon in 1993 and took the Viridor name in the 1990s after merging with Blue Circle Waste Management, then grew through many local purchases. KKR, an investment firm, has owned it since July 2020. Since then it has sold some collection and recycling sites to Biffa, according to a trade wiki, so as to concentrate on energy recovery and plastics. Viridor's chief executive is Kevin Bradshaw, and Ian Wakelin is chairman, according to Wikipedia.
Its Taunton headquarters is in Somerset. Its flagship is the Avonmouth Resource Recovery Centre near Bristol, which Viridor describes as the UK's first building to combine plastics reprocessing with an energy recovery facility. It can take 320,000 tonnes of household waste a year and reprocess more than 80,000 tonnes of plastic, and Viridor said it created 125 permanent jobs. Viridor also holds the Greater Manchester waste PFI contract, which Wikipedia calls the largest waste and renewable energy contract in the UK. A trade wiki says it has more than 3,000 staff and over 300 facilities, while Wikipedia says 320 facilities.
In Viridor's own words, its goal is net zero emissions by 2040 and to become the first net negative emissions waste management company in the UK by 2045. Its CEO has said ending the export of plastic waste from UK shores "can become a reality". Since 2001 its Viridor Credits programme has distributed Landfill Communities Fund money to heritage and biodiversity projects. These are company statements, not checked claims.
People at Viridor work as plant operators and engineers, chemists and process specialists in plastics, drivers and logistics staff, health and safety advisers, project managers for new plants, and in commercial, finance and sustainability teams. If you like engineering, science or large construction projects, the build of a plant such as Avonmouth, with more than 500 people on site at its peak, shows how many different jobs sit behind one waste facility.
Website: www.viridor.co.uk
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