operate efficiently and to the highest environmental standards.

Cory takes advantage of spare capacity at the transfer stations for the receipt of local trade and commercial waste.

WRWA currently provides an integral Household Waste and Recycling Centre (previously known as a Civic Amenity Site) at its Smugglers Way transfer station and Lambeth Council also provides its own, additional, Reuse and Recycling Centre at Vale Street, West Norwood.

WRWA receives co-mingled and separated recyclables at its transfer stations and a Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) was constructed at Smugglers Way in 2010/11, so that most of the separation and baling process is now carried out on site and the baled materials are then transported on to their various market outlets elsewhere in the UK or abroad.

Green Waste collected kerbside by the constituent councils and at WRWA's Household Waste and Recycling Centre is bulked at the transfer stations for onward transportation to a number of centralised composting facilities within, or just outside, the London area.

Most of the waste that cannot be reused or recycled is compacted into containers before being loaded onto barges for their onward river journey. Historically, this was to Cory's landfill site located on the Thames Estuary at Mucking, Essex, but since the completion of the Riverside Resource Recovery Limited's (RRRL) Energy from Waste Facility at Belvedere, in the London Borough of Bexley, the waste has been used for energy recovery. The Authority is now sending "zero waste" direct to landfill and is generating enough electricity to power over 100,000 homes.

Collaborative negotiation between the Authority and Cory Riverside Energy led, in March 2017, to a successful restructuring of the Belvedere Energy from Waste (EfW) Facility's long term borrowing which will generate significant financial savings for the Authority as a consequence. The Facility will, for decades to come, ensure a secure and environmentally sound treatment method for that portion of waste which cannot be reused or recycled.

WRWA has been incentivised to find alternatives to landfill, both environmentally and fiscally. Those who manage and control waste are now required, by law, to follow the waste hierarchy and year-on-year increases in the rate of landfill tax (scheduled to continue to rise by £8 per tonne per annum), mean that the landfilling of waste has become an uneconomic proposition as well as one which is found at the bottom of the waste hierarchy in terms of its impact on the environment.