Recycling for cash may bring up images of scrap metal merchants for some and of children returning glass soft-drink bottles for others. As many people are now finding their cash to be stretched, more and more are finding that there’s money in old rope, bottles and cans, out-of-date gadgets and ink and toner cartridges. Sometimes it’s just a few pence, but in other instances, it can be as much as £150 for an item. To make recycling smaller items worthwhile, the recycling needs to be done in large numbers, and sometimes even then the payback isn’t that large. On the other ... Full Story

The Drinkaware.co.uk website is suggesting to the public that recycling habits can useful in monitoring alcohol consumption. The chairman of the UK charity, Derek Lewis, noted: “Drinking in the home can lull us into a false sense of security because we simply fail to take note of the amount we consume. But the reality is that many people are unwittingly at risk from the long-term health problems associated with drinking too much alcohol.” Lewis went on to say: “With this campaign, we’re encouraging everyone to use the evidence of the cans and bottles in their recycling bins to gauge whether or not ... Full Story

Since a peak reached in 2006, the amount of recycled glass used in the UK by glass container manufacturers has dropped "substantially below" that level, according to the most recent Market Situation Report issued by Wrap. The glass recycling report looked at new developments in glass manufacturing and recycling through the end of June of this year, and determined that the amount of recycled glass used in the manufacture of glass containers dropped from 36 per cent to 30 per cent in the period 2005-2007, due to the effect of increased production and a decrease in cullet use. The greatest decline has ... Full Story

UK-based AWS Eco Plastics has just announced that it has finished its £14 million upgrade to its Hemswell, Lincolnshire plant, making it Europe’s largest plastic bottle recycling facility. According to the company, the upgrade to its plant, which was made possible by £6 million in funding from the Sustainable Technology Fund, increased the facility’s capacity by 400 per cent, making it possible to process 15 tonnes of plastic waste hourly, or 100,000 tonnes each year. The chief executive of AWS, Jonathan Short, has said the facility’s upgrades now makes it possible to recycle plastic waste in the UK that had previously been ... Full Story

This month, households in Corby have been re-introduced to a glass recycling scheme. It will be the first time in over a year since the previous scheme was closed and residents were forced to separate the glass for other recycling measures. Previously, residents could place their glass into their yellow boxes but the system was replaced by a three bin scheme which left no place for glass. Now, residents can put glass jars and bottles into brown bins to be taken up via kerbside collection. No longer will people have to separate their glass for recycling. Starting September 1 plastic items such ... Full Story

Simon Jackson, the boss at a Halifax nightclub has a problem - he's stuck with several tonnes of glass bottles and has nowhere to recycle them. The Acapulco recycles approximately 14,000 bottles a week, something the club managers have done for the past eight years. Now that Sita has taken over the Calderdale waste collection contract, the company tells Jackson thanks, but no thanks. Jackson typically saves up bottles for a week and then hauls them to a recycling site at Lee Bank. Sita has told Jackson that he now needs to take the bottles elsewhere. "We got no money out of ... Full Story

The Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc. has announced its choice of Redemtech, a world leader in IT asset disposition and Technology Change Management services to handle its electronic waste initiatives. Redemtech will be responsible for developing and managing the company's "comprehensive asset recovery and disposition program designed to keep PBG electronic equipment from entering the waste stream". "With e-waste becoming an increasingly important environmental issue, more companies today are realizing they can be part of the solution rather than the problem," said Robert Houghton, president and CEO of Redemtech. "The Pepsi Bottling Group has demonstrated a serious commitment to promoting environmental sustainability ... Full Story

Plans for the expansion of a waste recycling initiative for retail outlets and businesses in west Oxfordshire are in high gear. The waste recycling initiative was started in mid-2007 and has so far managed to divert one hundred and thirty tonnes of glass and cardboard from being sent to landfills. Currently one hundred and twenty customers have joined the scheme and the West Oxfordshire District Council is planning to add to that number. The recycling boxes are collected on Saturday every week and the customers can choose from four distinct sizes of waste collection boxes. The manager of Usborne Publishing archive store, Zoe Wright ... Full Story

A recycling firm has revealed that due to the testing of the upgrades made at its aerobic digestion facility it was being forced to send more municipal waste to landfill sites. Premier Waste stopped the processing of waste earlier this year in March at its Thornley-based Premier Advanced Recycling Centre after the Environment Agency directed that company dump ten thousand tonnes of the digester's output to landfill sites. Durham county council owns Premier Waste. This was because the environment body was concerned about the amount of plastic and glass found in the compost-like-output. The Environment Agency was also concerned that the processing ... Full Story

A new report has revealed that the rates of recycling for cardboard and bottles have been hugely exaggerated. In New Zealand for instance statistics were doctored to show that the rate of recycling for glass bottles had risen by seventy thousand tonnes. Also the statistics for recycling of cardboard had to be reduced by close to three hundred thousand tonnes since it was discovered that most of what had been claimed to have been cardboard packaging was printed paper and newspapers. The inaccuracies were discovered by an independent audit of National Packaging Covenant Council of Australia which claimed that they were not ... Full Story

The Chief executive of a major UK waste management company has hit back at the Campaign for Real Recycling (CRR) for criticising the practise of co-mingled collections. Ian Wakelin of Greenstar UK, insists that co-mingled ( or mixed) collections could increase recycling levels by 15 per cent. “I don’t agree with the CRR’s argument that co-mingled collections undermine the environmental and financial benefits of recycling.” he commented, describing their criticism as ‘very frustrating’. “The negativity of co-mingled press driven by proponents of kerbside collections is very frustrating. We need to make recycling as simple as possible and the best way to do this ... Full Story

With cheap ferry fares and spectacular scenery, Scandinavia is becoming an increasingly popular holiday destination for summer travelers from the UK. The government recently launched a campaign to help get tourists recycling even while on vacation. Most bottles and cans in Scandinavia have a recycling symbol on the container which indicates that the container can be recycled. Not only does the symbol indicate that you shouldn’t put it in the trash, but it also indicates that a refund is available upon recycling. In Denmark, these marked bottles and cans are worth DKK3.00 each (£0.32) and in Sweden, each bottle or can recycled ... Full Story