A design student at a Preston university has proved that fashion doesn’t always have to be expensive, by making a dress out of recycled items. Helen Draper from the University of Central Lancashire used items she found in her own cupboards to make the latest addition to her final year project. The stylish dress, which is made up of doodles, train tickets, photographs and postcards, will go on display alongside a similar item made entirely of used teabags at her final end-of-year show. The 23-year-old, who is a self-confessed hoarder, told the Lancashire Evening Post said she wanted to make something ... Full Story

Plans to ban certain materials from being sent to landfills, which would have included food, metals and paper, have been scrapped by ministers after a government report warned that doing so could increase fly tipping. Householders will no longer be faced with the requirement of having to install slop buckets within their kitchens in the wake of the government report indicating that forcing people to separate out food waste could lead to more fly tipping instances. Furthermore, the year long consultation culminating in the report found that by forcing households to collect food waste councils would have to use more taxes ... Full Story

A confidential-waste company is set to acquire a Welsh shredder business, South Wales Shredding. Shred-it, which operates on an on-site basis, has purchased South Wales Shredding – founded by Catherine Eley and Sheryl Capaldi back in 2007. Director Peter Driscoll, who held joint equity in the business with Ms Capaldi, will remain with the firm post acquisition. The value of the purchase has not been disclosed. South Wales Shredding offers secure on and off-site collection and disposal for businesses with confidential waste throughout South Wales and into the south west of England. The new acquisition, located in the Garth Estate in Taffs ... Full Story

In a Jersey car park in St Aubin, numerous recycling bins will be installed in  an effort to increase on-the-go recycling for local residents. Beginning Friday, islanders will be able to deposit recyclable items in the form of cans, paper, plastic and glass bottles directly into the new recycling banks being setup in the back of St Aubin’s parish hall. The facility will increase the number of recycling sites on the island to a total of 15. The bid comes in a move to reduce the growing number of fly-tipping incidents with glass bottles. Additionally, the Parish of St Brelade has put ... Full Story

A wide-ranging government review of waste management and recycling has a perceived excess of wheelie bins in its sights. Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman reckons some people have too many wheelie bins and there needs to be a review of whether this clutter should and can be reduced. Details of the review were presented in a report in the Daily Telegraph. Other points being considered in the government waste review include packaging, council bin collection frequencies, and how to incentivise Britons to recycling. It has already emerged that some homes seem to have an inordinate number of wheelie bins. Many households have ... Full Story

UK firm Dairy Crest is expanding the availability of its more environmentally-friendly milk in bags. Dairy Crest recently announced sales figures that illustrate the success the milk producer has already demonstrated in trials of the new format of bagged milk. The format has proved popular with both consumers and several national retail chains. Dairy Crest offers a unique, patented bagged milk product called Jugit. Jugit features a reusable, easy-to-pour jug into which Jugit pouched milk (milk in a special bag) is inserted. The design requires substantially less packaging material for retail handling and delivery of the milk to the customer, whilst ... Full Story

Aberdeen has seen waste recycling hit record levels since the city’s council implemented its alternate-week collection system. The new system was launched in May and the benefits showed immediately. Not only was May a record month for recycling, but in the weeks before the new system and even since, residents eager to maximise the usefulness of the new system deluged the council with requests for extra recycling containers. May was Aberdeen’s best month ever for recycling. The recycling rate hit 32 per cent. Initial figures indicate rose to 33 per cent in June. The figures for May and June are both ... Full Story

The latest figures from the Environment Agency show a marked increase in the amounts of packaging being recovered and recycled in the second quarter of 2010 but aluminium recovery is down. Some reprocessors have yet to report their data but about 1.8 million tonnes of packaging was recovered or recycled. This represents a 7.5 per cent increase over the same period of 2009. The amount of glass recovered was up by a handy 18 per cent, to 472,912 tonnes. However, some 3,000 tonnes less aluminium was recovered compared to last year. That’s a drop of 20 per cent. The lower ... Full Story

An entrepreneur, who tamed the intimidating investors on Dragons’ Den, has won a major national recycling award. Rachel Watkyn, who owns a recycled packaging business in Horsted Keynes, has been given the title of ‘Small Business of the Year’ at the National Recycling Awards.   Miss Watkyn’s Tiny Box Company, which three years ago was given a £60,000 cash injection after hardnosed investors Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis backed her idea on the popular BBC show ... Full Story

Students at 40 schools in Ealing have been instrumental in keeping 80 tonnes of waste out of landfills. Thanks to the pupils and a recycling programme launched just a year ago, 32 tonnes of cardboard waste and 49 tonnes of food have avoided ending up in landfills this year. The recycling scheme was kicked off at the beginning of the 2009/2010 school year by Ealing Council. To begin with, only 15 schools were part of the programme, but another 25 schools joined during the year. Green-thinking kids have already demonstrated the hugely beneficial effect of their recycling efforts. Ealing Council is now ... Full Story

Northern Ireland continues to fall behind other parts of the United Kingdom in recycling. Figures just released show households in Northern Ireland were recycling less than a third of their waste in the first quarter of 2010. By contrast, homes in England were already recycling at the rate of 34 per cent by 2007/2008. Northern Ireland’s domestic recycling rate in the first three months of this year was up by just 0.2 per cent over the same period in 2009. Meanwhile, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is forecasting England’s recycling rate will hit 40 per cent by the ... Full Story

Greenpeace has accused massive international firms of contributing to species loss and deforestation in Indonesia. Companies such as Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour were slammed by the environmental organisation on Tuesday for buying palm oil and paper from global giant Sinar Mas. Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), a subsidiary of Sinar Mas, was said to be “relentlessly trashing rainforests”, driving species into extinction and releasing carbon into the atmosphere in the Southeast Asian country. Greenpeace added that Sinar Mas’s sustainability commitments are not worth the paper they are written on, and expressed shock that some of the world’s best known brands are ... Full Story