News in Brief

A community group is to expand kerbside collections of garden waste into inner city areas in Birmingham after winning nearly 300,000 in national lottery funding.

The Community Service Volunteers' Run a Muck Community Composting project won the grant from the 35.2 million Community Recycling and Economic Development (CRED) programme.

The group is aiming the service at households with no access to council amenity sites, and will use a site in Sparkhill to turn the collected material into an alternative to peat-based soil improvers.

Ian Brown, the project officer at CSV, said: “The initial service provided by the project has proved very popular with residents and has already been extended. However, there remains demand especially within the eastern city districts and funding from the CRED programme will allow this to be met.”

DEFRA's Waste Implementation Programme is holding a series of regional seminars around England to promote the benefits of new waste treatment technologies.

The events form part of the new technologies workstream of WIP, one of five workstreams promoting the diversion of biodegradable municipal waste from landfill.

Nine events are being held during May and early June throughout the English regions, aiming to give impartial advice to local authorities and the waste management industry what can be achieved with new waste technologies.

For more details, phone consultancy Enviros, which is managing the events, on: 0870 240 9894.

Stirling-based waste management firm Snowie Group has won a two-year contract with Scottish Water.

The deal, worth 200,000 each year, includes the transport, re-use and recycling of materials from ten waste water sites in the Highland region, including Allanfearn at Inverness.

A company spokeswoman for Snowie said: “The Snowie Group has been operating in the specialist field of liquid waste management for 20 years and works for water companies right across the UK – from Scottish Water in the north to Southern Water and South West Water in the south.”