Conservatives to give vouchers to reward recycling
December 18, 2009 at 4:13 pm
The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, has said that if the Conservative Party win next year’s election they will reward households that increase the amount of rubbish they recycle. Conservative-controlled Windsor and Maidenhead Council have already piloted the plan. In order to meet EU targets the UK must reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill sites from 1995 levels by 25% in 2010 and by 65% in 2020.
The scheme mirrors the Recycle Banks that operate in over 500 cities in the United States. This has reduced the amount of landfill tax that each city pays and some of the money saved is funnelled back to individual households. It is an American company, RecycleBank, which operates the reward scheme for the council. On average households will be rewarded with £130 of shopping vouchers per year.
Residents are issued with special roadside recycling bins. Each has a unique barcode that is scanned by specialist equipment on the truck. The recycle bin is weighed and the information is linked to the household address on the RecycleBank Rewards Account website.
In his speech to the Green Alliance Mr Osborne was keen to emphasise the Conservatives’ reward initiative. ‘Carrots work better than sticks’, he said. This was to contrast their policy with the Government’s plan for a rubbish bin tax. Although the Conservatives’ proposal has been broadly welcomed by environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth, the charity Waste Watch was more cautious. It acknowledged that the scheme should spur households on to recycle but was concerned that we should all be encouraged to produce less waste in the first place.
A week of waste reduction campaigns
December 11, 2009 at 11:23 am
At the end of last month the UK joined nine other countries in the first annual European Week for Waste Reduction. This comes as the UK was criticised for failing to meet many of the European Union’s objectives for recycling and waste reduction.
2,151 national and regional campaigns took place. They promoted the various ways in which we as consumers can help to reduce the amount of rubbish that is dumped at landfill sites. The UK’s contribution was significant: 141 innovative campaigns were instigated by councils and waste management organisations.
Most of the initiatives were held in East Anglia, Wales and Scotland, and focussed on dealing with the waste produced by shoppers.
In Wales, 29 campaigns took place. These included swap events and initiatives encouraging the reduction of food waste. Reusable nappies and sustainable food purchasing were promoted, and the public were encouraged to refuse junk mail.
Owain Griffiths, head of Waste Awareness Wales, said: “The best way to ensure the least harm to our planet is to reduce the amount of rubbish we produce in the first place.” He suggested people be more selective about what they buy from the supermarket and that they choose products with no packaging.
An advertising campaign was also launched. It suggested that our unwillingness to recycle will negatively affect our children’s future. The advert depicts children struggling to recycle without their parents’ help.
In schools across Swansea swapping events were held. Pupils took in CDs, DVDs, games, books and toys to be recycled.
Scotland saw the initiation of 32 campaigns, and Belfast city council has planned a number of television and radio adverts.
In Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Peterborough buses promoting recycling travelled the streets.
In view of all these innovative schemes, it would appear that recycling is just one of many simple steps we can take to reduce the amount of waste that we generate.
Recycling label scheme nears target
December 4, 2009 at 4:23 pm
The festive season is approaching, a time when cash registers ring the sound of purchased gifts and food to fill the cupboards. But does your overflowing yuletide rubbish bin make you wonder if you could recycle more? The answer could be on your leftover packaging.
A new on-pack recycling label scheme launched earlier this year by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), has received its fiftieth signatory, ensuring the labels will be displayed on at least 50,000 products.
The scheme, operated by a not-for-profit company called On-Pack Recycling Label (OPRL) Limited, has been embraced by many of the country’s major brand names and retailers.
After only seven months, BRC looks on course to achieve its first-year target of sixty signatories.
BRC hope the standardized labels will succeed where it’s thought previous designs could fall short, by providing clear information to the consumer about how widely recycled certain materials are in local areas. The Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP) will monitor local recycling facilities to ensure products are labelled accurately.
The labels indicate three categories:
- Widely recycled (65% or more of local authorities collect that packaging type in your area)
- Check local recycling (15-65%)
- Not currently recycled (less than 15%)
Concerns that previous labels had become potentially confusing for consumers has prompted worry that too much recyclable material is passing straight to landfill.
Chief Executive of WRAP, Liz Goodwin said, “Consumer confusion is a major barrier to the UK increasing its recycling rates,” adding that “the retail sector needs to collectively adopt this voluntary scheme to enable all of us to recycle more often."
Following a recent report from Friends of the Earth, featured on this website last month, revealing the staggering cost of Britain’s failure to recycle, this is a well-timed and encouraging step towards a greener approach.
Visit OPRL to sign up to the scheme or to see a list of existing members.
Tesco and ASDA sign up to BatteryBack
November 26, 2009 at 10:21 am
In May this year legislation was passed to bring into effect, in the UK, a three year old EU directive, obliging all large retailers and manufacturers of batteries to offer recycling facilities in-store by 1 Feb 2010.
The eventual aim is for 25% of all household batteries to be recycled by 2012, with the figure rising to 45% by 2016. Currently the huge majority of these are sent to landfill. Less than 3% of portable batteries are recycled, amounting to a staggering 30,000 tons each year.
Last month, just two days before the deadline for major retailers to say which scheme they would be joining, two of the UK’s largest supermarket names, ASDA and Tesco, allied themselves with BatteryBack, a compliance scheme run jointly by Leeds-based WasteCare and Veolia ES, a giant in the waste management industry.
ASDA, which manufactures and sells fifteen different makes of battery, has said that it will be aiming to have a recycling scheme up and running in its stores ahead of the 1 Feb 2010 deadline.
Tesco meanwhile plans to have its in-store takeback scheme operating in the New Year.
Morrisons was ahead of the game in that it was the first supermarket giant to have a collection scheme in many of its stores several months ago. It too has joined BatteryBack.
BatteryBack currently has over 2,000 collection points in the UK and they aim to increase this figure fifteen-fold to 30,000 by the end of 2010 and to double that figure to 60,000 by the end of 2012.
In order to find out where your nearest collection point is, just type your post code into the relevant box on the website.
Tesco tries to cut waste with BOGOF Later scheme
November 20, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Buy One Get One Free offers are an extremely effective marketing tool for supermarkets. After all, there’s nothing guaranteed to bring a smile to a shopper’s face like getting something for nothing. However, how often have you ended up throwing away the free item because you have not been able to use it in time?
There has been much publicity recently about the fact that in the UK a staggering one third of all the food that we buy ends up in the dustbin. Not only does this cost our pockets dearly, to the tune of around £420 a year for the average household, but there is also a huge environmental cost. 6.7 million tonnes of food go to waste each year and if this was stopped it would be equivalent, in terms of carbon emissions, to taking 20% of all cars off the road.
Now it looks as though Tesco are trying to do something about the problem, with an announcement a few days ago of a BOGOF Later scheme. This will mean that shoppers are given a voucher entitling them to their free item at a later date. It is hoped that the new initiative will start in stores before Christmas.
Tesco are proud of their “green consumer revolution” citing their competitive prices on items such as low energy light bulbs and low impact washing powder as evidence that they mean business.
Friends of the Earth on the other hand are sceptical, with a spokesperson saying that if Tesco want to help the planet it will take more than replacing BOGOFS with BOGOFLS.
Sainsbury’s starts bulb and battery collections
November 5, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Sainsbury’s has announced that it will become the first supermarket in the country to start recycling old batteries and energy-saving light bulbs at its stores, in a move that will be welcomed by green campaigners.
Sainsbury’s will team up with Recolight, a specialist light-bulb recycler that already collects bulbs from businesses across the country. The battery recycling will be dealt with by Valpak.
The move is well timed. Energy-efficient light bulbs are set to replace traditional bulbs by the end of 2012. They save a lot more energy and last longer, but disposing of them has been highlighted as a potential problem because of the mercury they contain.
The person in charge of environmental affairs at Sainsbury’s, Jack Cunningham, said that Sainsbury’s is “delighted to be the first national UK retailers to launch a co-collection scheme for both waste streams”. He also said that combining the collections into one would help to save on carbon emissions.
The scheme will initially be launched in five stores this December, but by the end of 2010 the collections should have been unrolled to a further 200 stores across the country. Both bulbs and batteries will be collected in specially designed containers with one flap for each.
The CEO of Recolight, Nigel Harvey, said that the new partnership is very exciting for the company. He also said that they are "committed to go beyond the legal minimums of the waste electrical and electronic regulations.”
The scheme will help a lot more people to recycle their old bulbs with ease as they become more common in homes across the country.
UK loses £650 million a year from failing to recycle
October 30, 2009 at 2:46 pm
The UK is throwing away a vast amount of rubbish that could be recycled, wasting hundreds of millions of pounds each year as a result.
In a report from Friends of the Earth entitled ‘Gone to Waste: The Valuable Resources that European Countries Bury and Burn’, the charity revealed that 24 million tonnes of recyclable products are being sent to landfill or being incinerated each year. If these products were sold, £650 million could be made each year.
Recycling these products would also reduce CO2 emissions by 19 million tonnes, by eliminating the need for the new products being made in the first place. It would also increase jobs in the green sector and help to reduce the reliance on imports.
The report looked into the EU as a whole, and found that a staggering €5 billion was being wasted every year due to the failure to recycle more.
Many materials are lucrative when recycled. A tonne of aluminium can be sold for around £450. The UK is wasting more on failing to recycle textiles and plastics, which can sell for £175 and £90 a tonne respectively, than any other country in Europe.
Dr Michael Warhurst from Friends of the Earth said that the low recycling rate in the UK is “economic madness,” adding that “it’s time we recognised the real value of the materials we throw away every day.”
Friends of the Earth is now calling for a ban on sending recyclable materials to landfill, as well as preventing the construction of more incinerators.
London worst for sending waste to landfill
October 23, 2009 at 4:22 pm
London has one of the highest rates of sending rubbish to landfill for any major city in Europe. More than half of the waste in London goes straight to landfill. It has also been revealed that Londoners throw away 520kg of waste a year, which is the fifth-highest rate of all the major cities on the continent.
In stark comparison, residents of Copenhagen only throw away 420kg per year, about 20% less. And on top of this, only a remarkable 1% goes to landfill.
The study was carried out by French group Suez Environnement, which studied the waste habits of 24 capital cities across the continent.
About 2.2 million tonnes is thrown away by London residents each year, of which 52% goes to landfill, or 270kg per household. Only 22% of rubbish is recycled, and the rest is incinerated.
These figures come despite the rising costs of sending waste to landfill. The government is keen to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, and as a result is increasing taxes on waste. In 2010-11, authorities in London will be forced to pay £48 per tonne of rubbish that goes to landfill, providing a strong incentive to increase recycling.
The study showed that there was also a stark difference in the frequency of rubbish collections across the continent. Londoners can only expect to get their rubbish picked up once a week, compared to once a day in Paris. In Bucharest, the figure is even more impressive, with collections twice a day during the summer months.
One of the reasons that London’s figures are so poor is because a lot of other countries incinerate more of their waste which is then used to create electricity and prevent the production of methane, a process which the UK hasn’t yet caught on to.
New intiative aimed at foil and aerosols
October 15, 2009 at 10:56 am
Many of us are unsure about recycling everyday items such as foil and aerosols. Figures produced by Alupro, (the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation), show that 26,000 tonnes of foil are used in the UK for packaging and wrapping, in addition to 29,500 tonnes of aluminium and steel aerosols, each year.
Although around two out of three local authorities provide recycling facilities for aerosols and foil the message is clearly not understood by the general public. Only 39% of people realise that they can recycle aerosols and only 59% think that clean foil can be recycled. An encouraging 84% of households said they would recycle aerosols if they were able to and 85% said the same for foil.
Last month, Alupro launched a campaign to get the message across to householders and to encourage the remaining councils involved in offering the facility to recycle these materials. The campaign is being funded by giant Unilever, the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association and the less familiar Coppice Alupack, Nicholl Food Packaging and Jena, all of whom are foil manufacturers.
Alupro is a not-for-profit organisation which is responsible for ensuring that targets for recycling packaging waste are met. Rick Hindley, executive director of Alupro, said that it has never been easier for local authorities and waste management companies to “handle the material effectively” but stressed that only empty aerosols with lids removed could be recycled and that any foil put out for recycling must be clean.
Some would of course argue that we should avoid buying aerosols in the first place, since they are environmentally costly to produce and the gases used can cause harm to the environment but, if you have no choice, then make sure that you find out whether you can recycle the empty containers in your area.
Corus resumes recycling, town rejoices
October 9, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Formed from the merger of British Steel and Dutch manufacturer, Koninklijke Hoogovens, in 1999, Corus Group is one of the largest producers of worked steel in the world. The firm fared badly throughout the credit crunch, cutting jobs up and down the country, and losing a key mill in the North West.
Since then, the Indian-owned company has taken steps to reinitiate dead schemes. The revival of the Corus CanRoute recycling campaign, for example, is testament to the firm’s recovery from the global recession. After a hiatus of almost a year, CanRoute is a partnership between the steel giant and two recycling plants in Pontypool, Wales, and Workington in Cumbria.
The sites will be rebranded in corporate colours, becoming Corus Approved Steel Packaging Recycling (CASPR) centres – a mouthful, to say the least.
Corus has yet to reveal how much it will pay for used cans, but the responsibilities of CASPR facilities have been made plain. Workington and Pontypool will collect and bail steel for Corus, before shipping it off to one of its UK plants. The sites can also store excess material, should the need arise.
Prior to the announcement, officials had issued an open challenge to steel hoarders, urging them to contact Corus: “We are starting to buy scrap again, including packaging. Any company collecting cans should look at getting in touch with us."
The firm is proud of its commitment to the environment, and claims to be the largest recycler of steel products in the UK. Suppliers were vocal in their relief; Corus had been sorely missed by the British and European recycling industry.
