Year 8’s visit to Staffordshire Energy Recovery Facility

On our recent visit to the Staffordshire Energy Recovery Facility, our Year 8 Excellence Academy group were given a warm welcome by Veolia and shown around by Dan Myatt, the company’s Community Engagement Officer. Once you’ve got over the smell, the building is beautiful and it quickly became clear that this is a truly impressive facility, both in form and function.

We toured the mixing room, the control room and the furnace, while also hearing a detailed explanation of how the centre creates energy. Waste that cannot be reused or recycled is first conditioned before being fed into the furnace, where it is incinerated at very high temperatures. The heat from this combustion turns water into steam, which drives a turbine to generate electricity. The facility provides energy to the National Grid, sells surplus energy back, and even recovers materials from the ash for recycling. At the same time, the local council earns income from the site, which in turn supports the surrounding area.

We were especially impressed by Veolia’s commitment to the environment, which is often a drawback of power stations. The site is home to six meadows with ponds that provide a safe breeding ground for the rarest newt in the UK, while the building itself has a living roof that attracts pollinators and supports local ecosystems. It was encouraging to see how an industrial facility could not only generate power but also actively protect biodiversity.

The trip had a strong impact on our students, who were quick to link what they had seen to their studies. In a maths lesson on inverse proportion, they were asked how their visit could connect to the topic. Callum suggested, “As the ash increases, the amount of litter decreases,” which showed a thoughtful attempt to apply classroom concepts to real world processes.