News in Brief

BMW's Mini plant at Cowley has improved its packaging waste recycling programme with the addition of new towable containers from Taylor.

BMW is improving its packaging recycling system with the help of Taylor's towable containers

The car manufacturer now has the wheeled trade waste containers at strategic points in its factory, working with on-site waste management contractor Biffa Waste Services to collect packaging used to transport components.

Carl Payne, senior contracts manager for Biffa, explained: “The site's waste management and recycling centre is located away from the main factory buildings and requires containers to be transported on a continuous basis. Options involving loading containers onto trailers have been found to be time consuming.”

Up to four of Taylor's Continental Waste Containers can be linked together at one time, before being hitched to a tractor unit to be towed to the waste management and recycling centre.

Containers are colour-coded to ensure waste is separated for recycling. Each container can carry about 500kg of materials, which is weighed at the recycling centre and details about waste type and weight are recorded using a bar-coded system.

Pressure group Friends of the Earth has produced a new guide to help householders to reduce the amount of waste that they produce.

The guide, “Don't Throw It All Away”, provides advice on how to lessen the impact on the environment through using less, reducing wastage and recycling various materials such as paper, plastics, cans and glass as well as household products including electrical equipment and batteries.

Tips in the handbook include sending unwanted items to charity shops, repairing clothes, restoring chairs and other furniture, re-filling jars and bottles. The guide advises householders to use public libraries and urges readers not to accept excess packaging or plastic bags in shops.

One family in Nottinghamshire saved 150 over the course of a year by cutting back on their waste, Friends of the Earth said.

Campaigner Georgina Bloomfield said: “We really need to see action at all levels to cut back on waste. That means everyone – from government to industry to individuals – needs to look at what they produce and where it ends up. By cutting back on waste at source, we can really start to reduce our rubbish mountain and make better use of our valuable natural resources.”

More information on the book, Don't throw it all away, can be found at the Friends of the Earth website.

The Rethink Rubbish Western Riverside campaign has commissioned the Science Museum to design a new interactive display to educate children and their parents on the benefits of reusing, reducing and recycling rubbish.

Children experience hands-on learning about recycling

The “Recycling Explained” display shows what happens to household waste once it leaves the home through to it being reprocessed into new products. It uses colourful, visual and tactile stimuli and features a panel of ‘touch and feel’ products made from recycled materials.

Annette Mayne from the campaign said: “Everyone who has seen the display clearly engages with it and is surprised when they realise just how easy it is to recycle and buy recycled products. It really helps to show how recycling can be part of our everyday lives.”

The interactive display is just one of many communication tools the awareness campaign is utilising to encourage more residents to recycle locally and close the recycling loop by buying recycled. At the moment, the campaign is carrying out a major doorstepping project to bring the recycling message to residents face-to-face.

Bristol based recycling organisation, The Recycling Consortium, has been awarded 95,078 from the national lottery to raise awareness of recycling among residents living in flats.

Money from the Community Recycling and Economic Development (CRED) programme will help the ‘Beyond the Black Box’ project encourage residents in multi-occupancy buildings to use their mini-recycling centres.

In particular, the project aims to raise awareness of the importance of recycling and how each resident can do more to stop the three materials paper, glass and cans from going to landfill sites. The project has already begun at three out of a potential 120 sites in Bristol where the amount of materials recycled has been “extremely low”.

Commenting on the award, Martin Pearse, Projects Manager at The Recycling Consortium, who will be running the project in partnership with Bristol City Council, said: “This award is great news for the Consortium who can now assist Bristol’s flat dwellers and those who live in multi-occupancy blocks, to recycle more easily.”