Westfield Shopping Centre announced today the launch of its new recycling initiative, which will see an expected 675 tonnes of beverage containers diverted from landfill per year. The scheme, which will be rolled out on a national level, could collect enough recyclable material to fill nine Olympic swimming pools per year. The Parliamentary Secretary for the NSW Minister for Climate Change and the Environment, Angela D’Amore MP was on hand to official kick-off the campaign at the Westfield mall in Burwood, NSW yesterday. According to Ms. D’Amore the coordinated recycling plan was a first for Australia and that it would significantly ... Full Story

According to a new study, shoppers have decreased the use of plastic bags being doled out at supermarkets by over four billion from 2006 to present. The study monitored the use of single-use bags showing that it dropped by over 40 per cent over four years to 6.1 billion this year as of May. The figure suggests that the use of recycled bags is on the rise I comparison to 2006 when UK shoppers were going through a record 10.6 billion plastic bags. According to the British Retail Consortium, which published the report in conjunction with WRAP, the results indicate that there ... Full Story

A newly discovered expanse of territory in the North Atlantic ocean has been highlighted as containing high concentrations of plastic waste, similar to those existing in the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. The research, carried out over 22 years at the Sea Education Association in Massachusetts and the University of Hawaii, has been published in a new study detailing the Atlantic plastic debris issue. The study is published in the most recent addition of the journal Science. According to the article, over 64,000 items of plastic located at 6100 various hot spots have been sampled annually. Surface plankton nets ... Full Story

A new report from Swiss consulting firm SRI Consulting suggests that the yield from PET recycled bottles is 50 per cent or more, meaning that placing the bottles into landfill may lead to a lower carbon footprint. According to Eric Johnson, a research analyst at the Zurich-based consulting company, recycling is not the most efficient way to handle waste management of PET bottles. He added that firms needed to examine all the plastics collected. Author of the report PET’s Carbon Footprint: To Recycle or Not Recycle, Mr Johnson outlines the ... Full Story

Plastics recycling firm Closed Loop Recycling is planning to open a series of plants across Britain. The company, which produces food-grade rHDPE and rPET, has hired UBS bank to help raise £30 million in financing for its plans. Closed Loop Recycling already has a plant in Dagenham, Essex, which has been operating since 2008 and has been very successful. The company is now intent on building a second plant on Deeside. The Dagenham plant already produces 35,000 tonnes of plastic bottles from consumer waste every year. The new plant will bring total annual production capacity up to 85,000 tonnes. The combined ... Full Story

  A pioneering Scottish eco-packaging company have launched the world’s first compostable cutlery that can withstand high temperatures. Start-up enterprise Vegware, which makes products for the catering industry out of plant matter, are moving to bigger premises in order to cope with the increased demand.   The company was first established in 2006 by Edinburgh-based entrepreneur Joe Frankel. His vision was to create alternatives to plastic disposables for the catering industry. ... 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

Thirsty residents in the south of England are being urged to take a ‘tap water test’ in a bid to cut down on waste created from bottled drinks. Councils across Dorset are urging people to go back to tap as part of a new drive to cut waste and save money and energy.   Recycling teams are heading out across the region where they are setting up stands and inviting residents to rediscover the taste ... 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

  A boat made from plastic bottles has completed a four-month voyage from San Francisco to Sydney Harbour. The vessel, known as the Plastiki, took the 9,000 mile journey in an attempt to raise awareness of the environmental dangers of plastic waste.   In total, 12,500 bottles make up the boat which is manned by a crew of six, and hundreds turned out in Sydney to witness its triumphant docking. Environmentalist ... Full Story