Illegal waste arrives back in UK from Brazil
August 26, 2009 at 1:59 pm
We all know how unpleasant it can be scooping up the contents of our bin bag after a fox has had a good rummage, so spare a thought for the Environmental Agency team which is about to get their hands dirty but on an industrial scale.
A ship carrying 71 containers of toxic waste landed at Felixstowe Docks last week after being ordered back to the UK by Brazilian authorities; they had been shocked to discover that instead of recyclable plastics they were about to import hazardous and toxic waste. Whilst it is legal to export waste for recycling abroad, it is illegal to export waste for disposal.
According to Sky News, amongst the stinking rubbish were condoms, used nappies, bags of blood, syringes, bandages, household waste, car batteries and computer parts. The Brazilian Environment Agency (IBAMA) was understandably outraged and called for overseas countries to stop treating Brazil as the world’s rubbish dump.
The plan now is for the containers to be fumigated and sealed for a week, after which time Environmental Officers will sift through the waste for evidence of the perpetrators. Last month, three men from Swindon were arrested in connection with the crime, by Wiltshire Police and the Environmental Crime Unit which will be in charge of the investigation at Felixstowe. If found guilty the men could face an unlimited fine or two years in prison.
The Environmental Crime Unit was set up last year to target organised waste crime and consists of twenty former detectives, forensics experts and intelligence officers. We are all used to reading tales of people receiving draconian punishments for putting rubbish in the wrong bin or putting their bin out on the wrong day, but Environment Agency’s Liz Parkes was keen to assure people that this is not the purpose of the Unit “This is not about people putting rubbish in the wrong bins – we concentrate on those individuals and companies whose illegal activities have the potential to cause serious damage to the environment."
Marks & Spencer customers rewarded for recycling
August 7, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Marks & Spencer and Oxfam have introduced a new scheme to try to persuade people to recycle more of their soft furnishings rather than sending them to the tip. The ‘Soft Furnishings Exchange Programme’ has just been launched by the high-street store and the charity, and it will hopefully prove popular with shoppers.
The system is simple. Shoppers who bought soft furnishings from M&S in the past can now take them into an Oxfam shop instead of throwing them away, and they will be given vouchers in return. Each voucher will be worth £5, and it will allow the customer to make purchases on any homeware, clothes or beauty products in any M&S store. The vouchers will be valid for one month after they have been handed out, and they can only be used with a purchase over £35.
This scheme follows on from the successful clothes exchange programme that Oxfam and M&S introduced last year. So far, the scheme has managed to prevent 3 million garments from going to landfill sites, as well as raising £2 million for Oxfam. The scheme has proved hugely popular because it has allowed customers not only to help the environment but also to donate to charity at the same time.
According to DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), each year one million tonnes of textiles end up in landfill sites instead of being recycled. So if this scheme can help to reduce that number then it will surely be hailed as a success.
David McCullough, the director of trading at Oxfam, said that they are trying to make it “even easier” for people to recycle their textiles and to “make it curtains for poverty”.
Plastics 2020 Challenge launched
July 23, 2009 at 3:31 pm
It looks like there could be a new initiative in the plastics industry to increase recycling rates, as it has just launched a new campaign to get itself and others involved in recycling. The launch of Plastics 2020 is an attempt by the industry to set itself, consumers and the government the task of doing more to keep plastics out of landfill sites and to get them reused.
Launched in Westminster, the campaign already has the support of many MPs, and represents the first time that both processors and manufacturers have got together and set their own specific targets. The overall aim is to double the rate of plastic packaging recycling by the year 2020. The public will also be able to join in through a new website that has been launched, and numerous charities, including Friends of the Earth, will join in by taking part in various debates on the web.
One of the reasons the campaign has been launched now is that research from ComRes released recently showed that councils are not faring too well when it comes to meeting the targets they have been set for recycling next year. According to the research, a third did not think they would meet their targets next year, and a third didn’t think they would hit them between 2015 and 2020. This could lead to higher council tax bills as a result.
Calum Forsyth from Plastics 2020 said that although plastics are now “indispensable to our daily lives”, there is an “urgent challenge” to deal with their disposal as “time is running out”.
Best before dates might go in order to save waste
July 21, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Many of us look at the food packaging and simply aren’t sure whether we should eat what’s inside or chuck it in the bin. If in doubt, we throw it out. But the government are now starting to get very worried about the damage this is doing to the environment and to the economy too. The estimated total sum of money spent in the unnecessary wastage of food in the UK is a whopping £10 billion every year.
The Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, has called for action to be taken to make the best-before and display-before labelling on food items much clearer and possibly even scrapped in some cases. At present the retailers label their food with these dates so that they can properly manage their stock intake, as well as give information to the consumer about time limits for eating or drinking the item safely. The Department of Food and Rural Affairs is, however, concerned that it is only benefitting the retailers and not helping the customer or the environment.
The government sound keen to scrap the dates but the retailers insist this wouldn’t be a good idea. They feel they could bring in tougher rules that would make the labels easier to understand and which would ensure that all are laid out in the same way. There has been a lot of improvements in the packaging side of retailing, with the Trading Standards having a set-template for certain items so that they can see where some retailers are not abiding by the rules. DEFRA are working with the retailers in issues such as packaging, as well as restricting what materials go to landfills, so the dates look like they’ll be next on the agenda.
Bottle recycling plant gets go ahead
July 10, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Recycling in Wales received a boost recently after WAG (the Welsh Assembly Government) provided a grant to Plastics Sorting Limited for a new plastic bottle recycling plant that will be constructed in Ebbw Vale.
It is the second grant given to the project by WAG. It originally gave £850,000 in September 2008, and this second grant of £450,000 means that the total has now risen to £1.3 million, which will really help to get things up and running.
The plant will have the capacity to recycle 20,000 tonnes of bottles a year. It will be able to sort the bottles and clean them, and will then recycle them so that they can be reused. It will be able to do this with PET and HDPE plastic bottles, and it is thought that the site will be fully functional by March 2010.
Jane Davidson from WAG said that the plant will be “a key part in making our vision for a society that produces as little waste as possible.”
She also highlighted the benefit that will come from more jobs and investment in the green sector.
On top of providing clean recycled bottles, the plant is going to increase its green credentials by not only using rainwater for the majority of its process water, but also using an anaerobic digestion facility nearby, which is a renewable source of fuel, to provide its electricity and heating. This will lead to a site that is not only providing an earth-friendly service, but is also environmentally friendly in its operation.
M & S use recycled plastic bottles for food packaging
July 3, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Marks & Spencer have become the first supermarket in the UK to use food packaging made from recycled plastic bottles. Described as a “groundbreaking step forwards”, this move is part of the supermarket’s commitment to its sustainability pledge, Plan A, which has already seen the retailer take huge steps towards addressing issues such as climate change, ethical trade, health, the responsible use of natural resources and waste.
Many of Marks & Spencer’s ‘Food To Go’ salads are to be packaged in plastics which contain up to 40% recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate). This has been used before in the manufacture of milk bottles (and is in common usage in synthetic fibres such as Terylene and Dacron), but it is thought that M&S are the first to use it in food packaging.
M&S has worked closely with Dagenham-based company Closed Loop Recycling, which also offers office workers in four large cities in the UK (Greater London, Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham) the opportunity to recycle their food packaging waste. It is hoped that by next year the scheme can be introduced nationwide.
The head of packaging at M&S, Dr Helene Roberts, described the initiative as “closing the loop” for food recycling in the UK. Consumers have long been pressurising the food industry to take a look at their green credentials and address the issue of sustainability of packaging.
Chris Dow of Closed Loop explained that each plastic bottle that is recycled reduces the carbon footprint by 55%, resulting in huge benefits for the environment.
Britain worst in Europe for electrical recycling
June 26, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Britain has picked up the wooden spoon in a recent survey looking into the electrical recycling habits of Europeans. According to the results of the new research, we are apparently the worst in Europe when it comes to recycling WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment).
WEEE comprises such devices as mobile phones, PCs, laptops and games consoles, and the research carried out by Dell suggests that we are falling way behind the rest of the continent when it comes to recycling these products.
The survey questioned 5,000 people across Europe regarding their recycling habits when it comes to old electronic products, and found that in Britain only half of consumers take appropriate recycling steps, compared to an impressive 80% of Germans.
Indeed, Germany, Spain, France and Italy all out-perform us when it comes to having a greater awareness of recycling initiatives, which is the root of the problem. Greater awareness leads to a greater level of recycling, so we still have a long way to go.
Within the UK, it was the Welsh who performed the worst, with 19% of people admitting that they had never recycled any of their technology products. This was followed closely by people living in the north of England.
There was also confusion between standard recycling and the recycling of electronic products. In the north east of England, almost three quarters of people claim to do what they can to recycle, but less than 1% recycle their electronic products. There is also little knowledge across the country of exactly what the WEEE initiative is, which all paints a rather depressing picture of recycling in the UK.
Waste industry sees signs of recovery
June 19, 2009 at 2:59 pm
The waste industry is apparently back in action, according to the latest survey from WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme).
The results of the survey that has recently been carried out suggest that China has revamped its demand for waste from the UK over the last few months, after the disastrous drop in demand that took place over the last year.
The huge drop in demand had devastating repercussions for the UK’s waste industry. Some companies were simply not able to cope and went bust, leaving piles of waste paper and other recyclables stacked high, and leading many to think that it was not worth recycling in the first place if their rubbish was just going to go to landfill.
Thankfully, due to an increase in export demand combined with shortages of materials, the prices have gone up from February to about three times what they were at their lowest level. Some materials such as glass haven’t done so well, but most materials have made at least some improvements.
The survey took into account over 200 waste processing firms in China, and nearly all of them reported growing demand for UK waste. The news prompted the director of WRAP, Marcus Gover, to state that China is “still open for business” for UK waste.
Not all is entirely back to normal, however, as there are still concerns that the end products, such as plastic bottles made from recycled materials, could suffer from lack of demand in the medium-term. However, in the short-term, it’s fair to say that things are looking good for the UK waste industry.
Train sleepers made out of recycling plastic coming to the UK
June 15, 2009 at 3:43 pm
The word ‘sleeper’ is often quite apt when it comes to the parts of the train tracks in the UK made out of wood. Although the wood is very durable and long-lasting, and has even become something of a fashion accessory for people’s gardens, there is something quite ancient about these timber boards that the rails sit on. It feels they need a burst of modernity and that burst has finally come in the form of recycled plastics.
The company in charge of the UK’s rail lines, Network Rail, has come up with a forward-thinking idea with the help of a Halifax plastics recycling plant called i-plas. The idea is to replace the thousands of sleepers, particularly in rural areas, with new recycled plastic ones. Over twenty tonnes of waste plastics will be saved from landfills, and other plants, and melted down into the shape of a sleeper. There will be a detailed assessment of the durability of the new products following this and Network Rail hope that if they are successful, then they will be installed throughout the whole of the UK.
Not only is this good for plastics but it’s good for timber. Although all of the current new timber sleepers come from managed forests, many of them have to travel quite some distances to arrive at their final destination. It’s a much greener solution all round then for Network Rail. The only problem is, how disruptive will installation of the new sleepers be, on top of the already embarrassing delays with Network Rail?
Huge breakthrough for UK’s metal recycling
June 15, 2009 at 3:41 pm
The press is often keen to point out the downsides to nuclear power, and in particular to the safety of their afterlife. When a nuclear power station comes to the end of its life, usually after around 40 years, the issue of what to do with the reactors and the site as a whole, is a worry for many environmentalists. Tonnes and tonnes of concrete is often poured over the area in the hope that waste doesn’t leak or cause problems in the future. This month sees a huge step forward for this problem.
A breakthrough has occurred in Cumbria that will see old metal from nuclear power stations being diverted from scrapyards, and melted down safely and recycled into other metals for the future. The site at Lillyhall, Studsvik, has just opened its doors to nuclear contaminated metals and is the first of its kind in the UK. The £6 million venture is a huge boost for the UK’s nuclear energy ambitions, towards which Gordon Brown has fully pledged his support this year.
The benefits of the new site are huge. Recycling steel is a much more environmentally friendly solution than mining fresh iron ore. It’s also a lot less expensive. This site means that previously hard to dispose of metals, taken from nuclear sites, will be turned back into invaluable metals in a safe environment.
The site has boosted the local economy and provided excitement in the area. Its construction has provided work for hundreds of people and up to 30 new jobs will be available when the site is fully operational. There is even an educational facility incorporated in the form of a viewing platform for schools to come and watch the recycling process.
