The newest beneficiaries of public funding provided under the Private Finance Initiative are four council waste management schemes. The money was given out by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The government department gave out approximately three hundred and ten million pounds and the lucky councils were Suffolk County Council, Leeds City Council, the Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham Partnership and Bradford Metropolitan District Council. The real intention behind giving out the money is to enable the fulfilment of the landfill directive targets in the United Kingdom by rerouting more than a million tonnes of waste from being sent to ... Full Story

In North Yorkshire County Council new guidelines have been initiated at household waste recycling centres, in order to make them easier and safer to use. The rules deal with the use of heavy commercial vehicles for the delivery of waste to the centre as well as arrangements for commercial waste disposal, construction waste and demolition waste. The new rules stipulate that people requiring the use of commercial vehicles such as vans and sign written vehicles for ferrying household waste will have to register with the County Council first to be allowed access to the recycling centres. Those using smaller vehicles do ... Full Story

SCC has increased the number of employees at its recycling centre, after landing a big contract. The facility which is situated on an area measuring fifty thousand square feet boosted its employee numbers by hiring fifteen more to add to a workforce that is already fifty members strong. The facility is located in Birmingham and has increasingly attracted new business of late. The pan-European integrator also has ambitions of hiring five more people and expanding the overall business by thirty per cent in the course of the next twelve months by landing more contracts. Jon Sansom, who manages SCC’s recycling facility, admitted that ... Full Story

Councils in Wales have been urged to introduce more food recycling services. This was stated by the Sustainability minister Jane Davidson while launching a fifty million pound grant package. The minister said the grant would assist councils to consolidate the gains they have made in recycling. More than half of councils have already begun or intend to start providing food waste recycling collection services in the coming year. Meanwhile, Welsh councils have raised concerns that a sharp increase on landfill tax will cost them a whopping ten million pounds. Ms Davidson however advised them that increasing their rate of recycling will assist the ... Full Story

The recycling service of Flintshire Council has won an award from Novelis, an aluminium can recycling firm, for delivering high quality discarded aluminium drink cans to the recycling firm. Novelis settled on Flintshire Council since the quality of discarded cans it had been supplying since 2004 was extremely high. Flintshire Council’s recycling service comprises of bring sites and a kerbside collection scheme that serves sixty thousand households. Dry recyclables are segregated into material streams at the kerbside and conveyed to a bulking warehouse, where metals are classified into steel and aluminium fractions by means of magnetic and eddy current separators. Aluminium cans recycled ... Full Story

Plans are at an advanced stage for Leicestershire County Council to move to the next stage with a one hundred and thirty million pound PFI initiative that could involve setting up a new Energy from Waste facility. The council's cabinet will soon be required to approve the submission of an outline business case to Defra in order to secure money to finance up to half of the scheme's costs. Once the approval is granted, the OBC will be submitted to the department prior to inviting interest from firms in September and formal bids in October. The council has set February 2010 as ... Full Story

Barely four months after acquiring Verdant waste firm which is based in Kent, Greenstar waste management firm has also acquired Dunstable Waste Group, which is based in Bedfordshire and which trades under the Firbank Chiltern name. The new acquisition is expected to bolster municipal services offered by Greenstar in the region. Ian Wakelin the chief executive of Greenstar said that the contract would enable them get a bigger foothold in the South East and would help them expand their very successful commercial waste and recycling model in the area. The chief executive also added that they would be feeding the Aldridge ... Full Story

On the shortlist of Cheshire's residual waste treatment contract worth one billion pounds are four bidders namely United Utilities, Shanks Waste Management, INEOS Chlor and Viridor Waste Management and Waste Recycling Group. The selection was done by Cheshire county council. Initially the number of bidders was thirteen. The shortlisted firms will now be required to put forward detailed technical and financial bids, giving a rough idea of how they plan to treat household residual waste and reroute it from being sent to landfill sites. A council spokesperson thanked all the firms for their interest and assured everyone that the process had been ... Full Story

Food waste recycling supported From a study conducted recently, Defra has disclosed that members of the public are supportive of separate food waste collections which the body considering critical in the efforts being made in the United Kingdom to reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfills. Minister Joan Ruddock said that the study revealed that close to seventy per cent of households utilise a food waste collection scheme regularly where it is offered once a week and once in two weeks for the residual waste. The study also found that the once a week food waste collection ... Full Story

An additional seven thousand and five hundred households in Preston will all soon be able to recycle their food waste on a weekly basis. Households in Fishwick, Ashton, Frenchwood and Ribbleton areas of the city will be getting their food waste collection bins in the coming weeks in readiness of the weekly food waste collection which will be launched this coming May. Already seven thousand and five hundred residents in the inner areas of Preston are able to recycle their food waste on a weekly basis through a highly liked initiative which has ensured the recycling of more than eight hundred and ... Full Story

Otters inhabiting the area near the proposed location for a recycling centre which has been mired in controversy could get an ‘animal subway’ in the name of protecting them from traffic noises in Denbighshire. Wildlife specialists are proposing an underground walkway which would shield a family of otters from noise pollution if the construction of the waste centre gets the consent. The wildlife experts are also proposing that vehicles entering the waste site, close to Rhuddlan castle, be made to cut speed as they deliver waste from households throughout North Denbighshire. This follows concerns raised by the Environment Agency about the effects ... Full Story

The residents of Surrey who wanted rubbish collections on a weekly basis to go with the fortnightly collections could be smiling all the way to the rubbish bins since the year-long trials in the community have been successful. The alternate weekly collection scheme of Spelthorne Council has raised the recycling rate to thirty three per cent. Though the goal was to reach a recycling target of forty per cent, the council is confident of achieving that if all the flats in the borough are incorporated into the scheme. As the summer months approach, Spelthorne Council is considering adding weekly collections of food ... Full Story