Westminster city council is the winner of the local authority recycling initiative for 2007 with Kelly Reynolds of Manchester city council clinching the Local authority recycling champion award.

The successes were announced yesterday (October 17) at the ceremony for the 2007 Awards for Excellence in recycling and waste management at a ceremony in London, which was addressed by recycling and waste minister Joan Ruddock.

The minister, addressing 340 winners, finalists and guests, said: "I would like to congratulate letsrecycle.com, this is a fantastic thing that they do - we all like to be appreciated, not just those who win but all those who enter. This is a big movement that recycling is now, something that has become really dear to people and important to our society.

Joan Ruddock spoke of the importance of recycling to society

"I read all the shortlisted entries and what I saw in those scripts was a great deal of innovation, imagination and enthusiasm."

Vital way

Mrs Ruddock reflected on her early involvement with waste and the difficulties of tackling flytipping in London. She noted that Labour had quadrupled recycling while in government and continued: "We have shown in the Waste Strategy 2007 how this country needs to move forwards. It used to be about preventing fly-tipping and making sure waste was dealt with properly - now it's an absolutely vital way of tackling climate change."

And, the minister highlighted the recent commitment to future spending of £2 billion on PFI credits: "Without infrastructure, without places to recycle and the big plants we will not have the facilities we need. This also requires legislation such as the LATS and the Landfill Tax, making landfill more expensive - this is all pushing diversion."

The Awards, run by letsrecycle.com, were presented at a ceremony at London's Savoy hotel, hosted by BBC presenter Bill Turnbull. Chair of the judges, Chris Davey, reflected on how the high number of entries and their quality had "made decisions very tough for the judges."

Westminster city council was praised for raising recycling in seven blocks of flats where recyclables are placed in bags and sent down former waste chutes for collection. Judges considered that this was a simple but cost effective solution and while not be applicable to all such blocks, was an initiative that could be widely copied. It was also supported by strong and ongoing communications and had seen recycling on the sites rise from 10% to 41%.

Rebranding

Kelly Reynolds of Manchester city council, receives the trophy from Martin Green of UPM, with, right, Bill Turnbull and, left, Steve Eminton

Kelly Reynolds of Manchester city council won the Local authority champion award. She was promoted from assistant awareness officer at Manchester city council to environmental awareness manager in just three years due to her successful record in managing public relations with regards to waste and recycling.

In 2006/07, she was responsible for rebranding the city's waste and recycling service with new logos and identified factors which affected participation. Ms Reynolds also tackled bin fires in the city and door-stepped homes in Moss Side to encourage residents to take responsibility for their waste.

Representatives from the Cheshire Furniture Forum, with (l-r) Steve Eminton, letsrecycle, Tom Musgrove, Straight, and (far right), Bill Turnbull

For the first time, and after high interest from the community sector, an award was presented for the Best community recycling initiative which was presented to the Cheshire Furniture Re-Use Forum. The Forum is a network of 14 social enterprises operating in deprived areas of Cheshire, set up by the Cheshire Waste Partnership in 2005. The Forum has increased the tonnage of furniture it reuses by 90%, and helped over 10,00f0 people quality assured training and also had a clear willingness to work together to overcome difficulties - such as where 2 projects overlapped.

Endorsement

A trade waste crew from Enterprise in Wolverhampton won the Collection crew of the year award. The category won endorsement from the presenter of the awards, Bill Turnbull, BBC presenter with the audience loudly applauding both Roger Collins and Les Dewsbury from Enterprise and also the two runner-up crews, both from Veolia in south London.

Per-Anders Hjort, chief executive of SITA UK with Les Dewsbury and Roger Collins of Enterprise, and (right) Bill Turnbull, (left) Steve Eminton

Mr Collins and Mr Dewsbury were been commended for their exceptional customer service and for their input into ways to improve the service, which Enterprise says has helped them win new trade waste contracts over 2006/07.

The High Street recycling champion award was won by pub chain JD Wetherspoon which has launched a nationwide recycling initiative across its network of 670 pubs, using the principle of reverse logistics centred on its new central distribution centre in Daventry.  It recycles annually about 29,000 tonnes of mixed glass, 2,800 tonnes of cardboard, 4,000 tonnes of plastic bottles and 1,000 tonnes of used cooking oil.

The Commercial recycling champion was won by Lauren Toates who runs the Green Team at Cambridge-based Domino UK, a printing and labelling firm. Ms Toates has helped reduce the waste sent to landfill by the company by 66% through bringing in additional bins for separating out all manner of recyclable material from paper and packaging to printer cartridges, batteries and even receptionists' uniforms. 

Cornwall was the destination for the Waste management initiative in the commercial or public sector, which was won by CORMAC which had set itself a target of reducing bituminous waste sent to landfill to zero by April 2008. 

This goal focused on two thirds of the company's waste stream - some 80,000 tonnes - and was achieved just six months later. This was done by adopting a bituminous waste management hierarchy.  Reheating topped the pyramid, followed by remixing, reuse on CORMAC schemes and then reuse on farm roads.

Recycling village

The award for Civic Amenity site of the year was presented to South Tyneside council for its Middlefields Recycling Village. The facility replaced a low-performing facility in September 2006 with more recycling containers to collect a wider range of materials and a dedicated community shop to support third-sector recycling partners.

South Tyneside council chose a site large enough to act as a "recycling hub", with covered facilities, improved traffic management and clear signage to make recycling more user-friendly, as well as increased staffing. Sustainability was key to the design of the site, with a water capture and usage system, and both solar and wind power systems. During its first year, the Recycling Village increased recovery rates from 26% to 42%, while current performance is now at 64%, well on the way to a 75% target.

The Innovation in design of a waste management facility category was won by Earth Tech for the Western Isles facility in Scotland. Faced with massive inefficiencies of scale because the islands produce only 20,000 tonnes of waste a year, as well as transport issues between islands and to the mainland, a solution was a bespoke facility in Stornoway, which includes mechanical pre-treatment, dry anaerobic digestion and in-vessel composting.

Sponsors

Sponsors of the awards were:  Abitibi-Consolidated Recycling Europe; ESTET (Environment Services Training & Education Trust); Severnside Recycling; Shanks; SITA UK; Straight; Transform, the Biffa WEEE compliance scheme; UPM; and Valpak.