The slow, painful birth of the waste strategy
The sports sector is being invited by the Environment Agency to mark Plastic Free July with a ‘kick plastic out of sport’ social media campaign.
Campaign toolkits have been sent to over 100 organisations inviting them to raise awareness of environmentally-friendly alternatives to single-use plastic items.
The toolkit has been created by the EA's plastics and sustainability team as part of the Interreg Preventing Plastic Pollution project. The aim is to embed positive behaviour change. Experts say that 50% of all plastic produced is for single-use items – items that are often only used a few times and then discarded, which may pollute rivers and oceans, causing harm to wildlife.
Mhairi Black, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, has officially opened Enva’s new £1.5 million ash recycling plant in Paisley, Scotland.
The facility can treat up to 20,000 tonnes a year of fly ash from biomass and energy-from-waste facilities. The ash, which would previously have been destined for disposal in hazardous landfill sites, is washed to remove contaminants and then combined with other materials to create a sustainable, concrete product.
To deliver its ash recycling solution, Enva has partnered with Anglo Scottish Concrete Holdings (ASCH) - a concrete and aggregate supply company.
Pictured, left to right, Les Spiteri (Laplace Solutions), Scott Newport (Head of Technical and Commodities, Enva), Mhairi Black (MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South), Michelle Scott (Operations Director, Enva), Laurie Clark (Managing Director ASCH), John Stewart (Director, ASCH), Mags MacLaren (Ward Councillor, Paisley Northwest).
The Environment Agency has prosecuted Brian Ward, Patrick Ward and Patrick Ward (unrelated) after they pleaded guilty to charges at Wimbledon Magistrates Court for waste crimes.
Brian Ward, 21, of The Gardens, Bessbrook, Newry, pleaded guilty to 3 charges of unlawfully depositing waste on land off Bianca Road in Peckham. He was fined £480 and ordered to pay £3,777 in costs and a £48 victim charge.
Brian Ward pleaded guilty for offences committed between 2 and 6 December 2019, of depositing mixed waste at an illegal waste site on Bianca Road.
Patrick Ward, 50, of Dobsons Way, Bessbrook, Newry, pleaded guilty to one charge of knowingly causing the unlawful depositing of waste at an illegal waste site at Herringham Road, Charlton. He was fined £480 and ordered to pay £48 victim charge.
A vehicle that was owned and insured by Patrick Ward, 50, was filmed on CCTV entering the site laden with waste and then reversing into a warehouse on 30 September 2021. The vehicle was then filmed driving away with the vehicle empty.
Patrick Ward, 26, of St. Marys Street, Newry pleaded guilty to three charges of knowingly causing waste to be unlawfully deposited at an illegal waste site at Pensbury Place, Wandsworth, London.
Between 14 and 19 November 2021, a vehicle insured to Patrick Ward, 26, was filmed three times on CCTV entering the site at Pensbury Place with waste in the vehicle and then filmed twice leaving the site without any waste.
Alan Lovell, Interserve chair and former chief executive of Costian, has been named as the Government’s preferred candidate for chair of the Environment Agency.
Environment secretary George Eustice Lovell to succeed Emma Howard Boyd when she steps down at the end of September.
His appointment will need to be scrutinised by parliamentary committees before being approved.
Hertfordshire County Council plans to stop sending waste to landfill sites by 2025 after signing new long-term contracts for disposal of the county’s residual waste.
The new disposal contracts will run from April 2024 for ten years, with an option to extend for another five. The contracts are with Cory Topco , Indaver Rivenhall, Viridor Oxfordshire and Veolia ES UK.
Eric Buckmaster, the council's executive member for the environment, said: “We want to create a cleaner and greener environment in Hertfordshire, so being able to stop sending waste to landfill sites is really a significant step for us."
Sterling Polymers has purchased the former Wards Fibre Plant on Windermere Road and is through the planning application process with Hartlepool Borough Council for the development of the site.
The firm plans to invest £25m – creating around 100 new local roles – to develop the site so that it also processes post-consumer and post-industrial flexible plastics.
The plant will be capable of processing 13 tonnes per hour, with a range of optical sorting, metal detection, screening, wash plant and then finally extrusion into a granule that can be used in manufacturing processes.
Bakers Basco has entered into an agreement with Allied Bakeries that will see them managing the recovery of the bakers’ own bread baskets and wheeled dollies whenever they fall outside of the usual supply chain routes.
Bakers Basco was set up in 2006 by five of the UK’s leading plant bakers to manage the flow of millions of the industry’s bread baskets that are used for transporting bread up and down the country.
Under the terms of the new agreement, Bakers Basco’s National Investigations Team will report the whereabouts of any of Allied Bakeries’ own equipment that they may come across while recovering their own stock. Bakers Basco will also take the lead on any negotiations or litigation related to the recovery of the equipment.
Kitchen appliance manufacturer Whirlpool UK Appliances has appointed Axil Integrated Services in a multi-million-pound contract.
This follows a previous partnership with the waste management firm that saw the manufacturer achieve a 50% reduction in general waste and achieve its zero waste to landfill by 2022 pledge at Whirlpool sites in Peterborough and Yate.
The contract includes the total waste management of all waste streams, including: scrap metal processing and recycling, cardboard, plastic, wood, general waste, dry mixed recycling and hazardous wastes.
Environment Agency officers issued a Stop Notice to prevent the deposit of waste and waste fires on land at Kenfield Farm, Main Road, Clenchwarton near King’s Lynn, after a blaze in May on the land.
A Stop Notice is issued to prohibit a particular activity where the Environment Agency believes there to be a significant risk to human health or the environment.
The deposit and burning of waste is now prohibited at Kenfield Farm. If the landowner fails to comply with the notice they can then be taken to court and prosecuted, as breaching the notice is a criminal offence. The notice will remain in place until such action is taken to mitigate the risk and the site has been brought into compliance.
Compliance scheme WEEE Ireland recorded 18.7 million waste electrical items collected in 2021, the organisation’s annual report has revealed.
127,000 fridges and 205,000 TVs and monitors were recovered, as well as over 2.3 million lightbulbs in a total takeback of 38,464 tonnes – 57% of the average goods sold over a three-year period.
The equivalent of over 54 million used AA portable batteries were also prevented from ending up in landfill.
Northern Ireland waste management firm Skipway has invested in a new trommel fines recycling plant, commissioned by CDE.
The 50 tonnes per hour plant in Lisburn, will be used to divert trommel fines from landfill and convert the material into a product with the same specification and quality as quarry grade sand, suitable for concrete and building products., Skipway said.
It said the fibrous nature of trommel fines makes them difficult to separate and recycle so they have traditionally been sent to landfill, where they attract the highest tax rate of £98.60 per tonne.
A fresh environment permit application to run a controversial £4.3m recycling facility in Abermule could face a two-month delay because of a backlog at Natural Resources Wales (NRW).
Powys County Council has applied to operate the North Powys Bulking Facility.
But NRW permit receipt advisor Tim O’Hara said: “The waste permitting team is currently experiencing a high demand for our services.
“Unfortunately, this will increase the time before applications can be assessed for completeness, and if adequate, duly-made ready for technical determination and consultation, as necessary. The current estimate is a delay of approximately eight weeks.”
NRW refused the original permit application in March over insufficient water to fight any fire at the site.
Bridgend County Borough Council is consider all options for the future of its waste service following contractor Kier’s withdrawal from the market.
Kier’s contract ends on 31 March 2024 and the company said in 2019 that it would take a “hard exit” from the environmental services sector as contracts ended to concentrate on its construction business.
The council will consider whether the service should be outsourced, provided in-house or through partnership with neighbouring local authorities.
Service options include increasing the types of material households can recycle, improving methods of collection and introducing a fleet of ultra-low emission collection vehicles.
A one-stop shop for developments in waste policy has been launched by Northern Ireland’s Department for Agriculture, the Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) and can be seen here.
Its waste strategy team developed the facility as a resource for policy professionals, stakeholders and members of the public to stay informed.
DAERA is due to publish a new waste management strategy in 2023 and work is beginning with the closure report for the 2013 strategy due to be published shortly.
Paper Round has announced that the company will be changing its name to Recorra.
The company said this was in recognition it has moved beyond the collection of paper and is a commercial full-service waste and recycling provider in London and the south east.
The word Recorra is derived from a combination of recycling, ecology and terra (the Earth). It was chosen to reflect the role that the company and its customers play in helping tackle the current environmental crisis through best practice recycling and waste management.
Polymer-based material technologies firm Aquapak is to sponsor GB Row, which it said would be the world’s toughest rowing challenge.
Teams of rowers will circumnavigate the British Isles in a 3,500km race, during which samples of microplastics, environmental DNA, temperature, noise and salinity will be gathered by sensors and equipment attached to their vessels.
These will be sent to the University of Portsmouth for analysis, allowing it to build the first map of microplastic and noise pollution around the UK.
Indigo Environmental Group has joined Sustainably Sourced Plastic Certification – launched by Sustainable Certifications Group (SCG) – which it said aims to improve the quality of recyclates across the industry with independent assurance for the UK’s plastic packaging tax.
The company’s Widnes site has received certification for each of the streams it processes – and its Ludlow plant is being audited this month.
It says certification provides evidence of ethical procurement and legislative compliance – showing the material is exempt from the tax on material with less than 30% recycled content.
Lewes District Council is to commission a fleet of ultra-low emission refuse and recycling vehicles by 2030.
Council officers will conduct trials including of electric refuse trucks, and ones fuelled by hydrogen or by renewable diesel.
Julie Carr, cabinet member for recycling, waste and open spaces, said: “We all want the cleanest and most modern refuse fleet, but in getting to that point we have to factor in the rapid speed at which the technology is evolving.
“Undoubtedly, the new ultra-low emission solutions that are coming forward currently will be readily available and more affordable in time for us to meet our ambitions.”
WRAP has won the small to medium sized business of the year category at the 2022 Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement (Fredie) awards organised by the National Centre for Diversity. It is ranked the 69th most inclusive organisation to work for of the UK’s top 100.
Chief executive Marcus Gover said, “Winning this Fredie award is testament to the dedication of everyone at WRAP to ensuring that we are as diverse and inclusive as we possibly can be.”
NWH Group has opened a £4.4m construction and demolition waste recycling wash plant on the outskirts of Edinburgh, using washing, screening, crushing and water treatment equipment.
It said the site would increase the firm’s processing capability from 75 to 250 tonnes per hour, and divert more than 450,000 tonnes per year of material from landfill.
Chief executive Mark Williams said the plant would increase recycling rates and improve the quality, reliability, grading and breadth of recycled resources available.
It wold also expands the firm’s product range from three to six types to include 10mm, 20mm, 40mm and type 1 aggregate, washed concrete sand and building sand.
Representatives of Northern Ireland’s Re-Gen Waste have visited Holcim in Spain to see the process behind the ECOPlanet range of green cement.
Holcim uses Re-Gen’s solid recovered fuel (SRF) as a partial substitute for the burning of coal in cement production.
Joseph Doherty, Re-Gen’s managing director, said: “The partial replacement of fossil fuel by SRF is becoming increasingly significant as the cement industry strives toward decarbonisation. Low carbon construction is the future.”
Sand and aggregate wet processing supplier CDE has marked its 30th anniversary by calculating that it has diverted more than 100m tonnes of construction, demolition and excavation waste from landfill in that time.
Chairman Tony Convery said that since its inception, CDE had delivered more than 2,000 projects in 100 countries.
It now employs a global workforce of over more than 500 people and operates in the UK & Ireland, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Australasia and the Americas.
Lincolnshire County Council’s collection amnesty for people to return unwanted medical equipment for reuse and recycling has been extended to household waste and recycling centres.
Wendy Bowkett, executive councillor for adult care and public health, said: “It means perfectly good medical equipment that is cluttering living rooms or ending up in domestic waste, can be reused or recycled.”
People can drop off unwanted equipment at the centres, while larger items such as beds, shower chairs and hoists can be collected for free by the community equipment service.
Recycling of steel packaging in Europe has hit a record of 85.5%, the Association of European Producers of Steel for Packaging. (APEAL) has said. This was an increase of 1.5% and the tenth consecutive year in which the overall recycling rate has risen.
APEAL secretary general Alexis Van Maercke said: “The excellent recycling rate which steel packaging continues to improve upon each year, is testament to steel’s strong environmental credentials and the work of stakeholders throughout the value chain to improve recycling processes, infrastructure, and consumer communications.
“It is also significant that more countries than ever before have recycled over 90% of steel packaging. It is a clear signal that closing the loop for steel packaging is within reach which is another exciting step towards a truly circular economy.”
Brackley Property Developments has completed Veolia’s new waste disposal unit in Grantham.
The 10,000 square feet facility on a 1.7-acre site is expected to be operational by the end of this month.
Stephen Pedrick-Moyle, managing director of BPD, said Veolia had been scouting for an appropriate location in Lincolnshire for nearly three years, before the two companies agreed to partner to procure the site.
Wigan Council and its waste and recycling contractor FCC Environment have joined with Wigan Cycle Project to recycle bikes brought to the recycling centres and get them back into use. Bike that cannot be reused are used for spare parts in repairs.
Small bikes are given away, and others sold at £10 - £80 depending on the work needed.
FCC Environment area supervisor Tracy Roe said: “Every day we receive good quality items into the site that have life left in them so it makes everyone feel better to pop them to one side and ensure they go to good homes.”
A former household waste recycling centre at Swanton Road, Norwich, has been reopened by site owner FCC Environment in partnership with local charity the Benjamin Foundation as a re-use drop off centre.
Residents can bring items otherwise intended for disposal to be sorted and sold in the charity’s Norwich shop.
Multi-material recycler Precycle will take any items that meet the reuse acceptance criteria, but are not deemed suitable for resale in the shop.
Cory has signed a power purchase agreement with energy trading company Danske Commodities for its Riverside 1 energy-from-waste facility in east London.
Danske Commodities will offtake the energy generated from around 750,000 tonnes of residual waste a year received by Cory.
Ben Butler, Cory’s chief financial oficer, said: “As one of the UK’s leading waste management and recycling companies, we are constantly looking to optimise our energy production from non-recyclable waste. Signing a power purchase agreement with an experienced trading company like Danske Commodities provides us with access to the energy market and decreases our liquidity risk.”
C-Capture, a developer of chemical processes for carbon dioxide removal, has been awarded £1.7m in Government funding to demonstrate the feasibility of low-cost carbon capture in hard-to-decarbonise industries.
It will put the money towards trials of its solvent-based technology with Hanson Cement, Bioenergy Infrastructure Group and Glass Futures.
Tom White, chief executive of C-Capture, said the company’s technique “uses less energy than currently available technology meaning it can significantly reduce the cost of carbon capture to a point that makes it affordable globally”.
The European Electronics Recyclers Association and the European Battery Recyclers Association have told the European Parliament and European Commission that where waste exports outside the EU are necessary these should only be permitted to facilities holding to the same environmental standards and permits as those within the EU.
They said this would promote global environment and human health, and provide an equal and stable economic playing field that would encourage innovation and investment in Europe.
Bristol Waste Company, owned by Bristol City Council, is due this month to open a new reuse and recycling centre at Hartcliffe Way, which will house the city’s second waste reuse shop and workshop selling and repairing used items that might otherwise have gone to waste.
Kye Dudd, cabinet member with responsibility for waste said: “This is going to make a huge contribution to changing people’s attitude to waste and recycling in the area. I’m especially happy to be taking steps to tackling climate issues, whilst directly benefitting residents and also the local economy.”
Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association chief executive Charlotte Morton has become an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list.
The award was for services to the development of the biogas industry. She has been ADBA’s chief executive since its foundation in 2009 but has been withdrawing from that role to become chief executive of the World Biogas Association (WBA).
Morton said: “I am extremely honoured to receive this OBE. It is critical that we develop the biogas industry to its full potential as fast as possible, not just to mitigate climate change but also for our food and energy security. It’s also a huge commercial opportunity that would create 60,000 new jobs across the UK.”
Few other honours went to people connected with the waste and recycling industry but Ruth Chambers, senior fellow at campaign group Green Alliance became an OBE.
A Glasgow recycling centre was evacuated last week after reports that a hand grenade had been found, Glasgow Live has reported. The bomb squad was called to Polmadie Recycling Centre and staff were evacuated.
A spokesperson for Viridor confirmed that the incident has since been resolved all staff were safe. The device found is believed to have turned out to be a replica grenade.
A 'cleaner found the suspect object in a picking cabin at the centre. olive said there had been no risk to the public.
North Yorkshire County Council is to hold market day roadshows and run a temporary drop-off service in libraries to encourage residents to recycle broken or unwanted small electrical appliances.
The campaign will remind residents to take more small electrical to household waste recycling centres and 20 libraries will for a month also accept these.
North Yorkshire this year became a county unitary council replacing seven former district councils.
Biffa has found at least 13 species of butterfly, including two of the UK’s most vulnerable, at a former landfill site in West Sussex.
It said the grizzled skipper and small heath - both among the most at-risk species - were regular visitors to Biffa’s Brookhurst Wood site in Horsham.
Brookhurst Wood closed as a landfill site in 2018 and now includes a 14-hectare wildflower habitat.
WRA celebrates 21 years; Tech partner chosen for waste-to-hydrogen plant; Valpak expands Re-Volt scheme; Council's electrical repair parties
Incoming Chartered Institution of Wastes Management president launches report arguing delays on EoW leading to material being disposed
Competition and Markets Authority will give its final decision by 11 September
Cheshire West and Chester Council officers recommend plans to build a suite of recycling facilities in Ellesmere Port
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