The decision follows the 141 million sale of RMC's waste management division Hales Waste to Biffa Waste Services in June 2003 (see letsrecycle.com story).
This has reduced the amount of money in the fund, which has also been impacted by the removal of sustainable waste projects from the LTCS remit.
For the past five years, the RMC Fund was managed by the Environment Council, which has now decided to pull out. The RMC Fund has stopped taking applications for grants and will be wrapping up in the next couple of months.
At an event celebrating the work of the RMC Environment Fund this week, RMC Environment Fund grant manager Catherine Russell said: “Due to changes in the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme and within RMC, the fund will be closing later this year.”
She added: “Over the last five years, the RMC Environment Fund awarded over 10.7 million to 173 projects. Over 20 million people benefited from these projects.”
New fund
RMC is now setting up a new environment body to distribute around 500,000 of credits from its remaining landfills.
The RMC Materials' environment manager Tim Pinder added: “It is not the end of the road for Landfill Tax Credits from RMC. Last year we sold most of our hazardous waste landfills and non-hazardous landfills but we will be carrying on what we are doing with the community projects.”
The new fund is in the early development stages and will have a new name and application process.
As a result of the partnership working between the Environment Council and RMC, a book has been published entitled: 'F;unding for Sustainability: A Partnership Approach'. It is aimed at sharing the experiences of the RMC Fund with other private-community sector partnerships.
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