Recycling can help you generate big savings!

A north-east authority on sustainability issues says that recent legislative laws aimed at reducing the effects of packaging on the environment will persuade smaller firms in the supply chain to look for more efficient and environmentally friendly ways of packaging. For instance from April, sending waste to a landfill will cost companies eight pounds per thousand kilograms.

It is the belief of the Envirowise regional manager for the North-east, Guy Bashford that smaller firms in the retailing and manufacturing sector will generate big savings if they recycle and adopt waste management methods that are in line with current trends and thinking.

Already some organisations are beginning to make steps towards that. In recent times Defra for instance set itself higher targets for the recovering and recycling of packaging materials for the period up to 2010. Previously the recovery rates had been set at seventy per cent but that has now been raised to seventy two per cent.

Big firms which record yearly sales numbers of more than two million pounds and which handle more than fifty thousand kilograms of packaging material per year are under obligation to have their details of recovery and recycling practises registered through a packaging compliance scheme or with the Environment Agency.

Defra commented that attaining success with the new targets would make sure that the United Kingdom is in line with the European Union’s aim of ensuring that sixty per cent of packaging material is reused or recycled. This would consequently lead to eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide being saved.