News in Brief

Corus help for Edinburgh recyclers

The group, part of the organisation, Changeworks, helps businesses to recycle cans, confidential paper, cardboard, plastic bottles and other business waste, and currently collects around 15 tonnes of steel and aluminium cans per week for recycling. Corus provided a Whitham Mills TCB steel baler to help the group deliver steel cans to JR Adams, one of Corus' 14 designated Canroute centres in the UK.

David Williams, manager of Corus Steel Packaging Recycling, commented: “Our aim at Corus is to increase awareness and enhance infrastructure so that, firstly, as much steel packaging as possible is collected for recycling and, secondly, that it is of the highest quality possible so that it can be recycled with relative ease.”

Oran Group new portfolio addition

Scottish waste management company, the Oran Group has acquired Kilbagie Paper Mill from the LPC Group.

The 45 acre site is located one mile north of Kincardine in western Fife and Oran expects to renovate the site and locate its head office, currently in Alloa, to the new site. Ben Ballantyne, Oran Group operations director said: “We are delighted to have acquired Kilbagie Paper Mill, which we feel demonstrates our commitment to delivering more complete solutions across the waste management industry.

“We are now looking forward to commencing the renovation work that will enable the site to become operational, a development that will also benefit the local community and offer additional employment opportunities.”

Monmouth heads towards zero waste target

Monmouthshire Community Recycling (MCR) – a partnership between Monmouthshire Environment Trust, and community recycler ECT has kicked off its 'zero waste village project' in St Arvans with funding from Environment Wales.

Zero Waste is a global concept, with communities from Canada, Cairo, New Zealand and Nepal, all aiming to eliminate waste. MCR offer kerbside collections of paper, glass, cans, clothing, plastics, cardboard, green waste, and food waste in some areas and St Arvans has been highlighted an example with at least 80% of residents regularly using these services.

David Roman, general manager at MCR said: “We want to stop just managing waste – we want to eliminate it. We'll share best practice as widely as possible as soon as possible, and we want to link with other community recyclers, so that eventually we can start to persuade government and manufacturers to design out the waste that's remaining. We've got to speed up Zero Waste as a reality.”

Lewisham bags it

Lewisham council has launched 10,000 of its very own cotton bags to help reduce waste and support local businesses.

From this month, the carriers will be customised with the name of each town centre in Lewisham and sold for £2 across the borough. It is hoped they will help reduce the 17.5 billion plastic bags which are distributed to UK customers each year.

Steve Bullock, mayor of Lewisham, said: “The bags look fantastic and can be folded away easily and put into a handbag or pocket to re-use, helping to reduce the amount of waste caused by plastic bags.”

Shredder prize for Worcestershire resident

Manel MacDonald of St John's had her name drawn to win a AXT RAPID 2000 shredder, which was donated by electronics firm Bosch. Material produced after using a shredder can be added to a compost bin to provide the right mix of 'greens' and 'browns' to help the compost to rot down quickly.

Viktoria Salisbury, the council's project development officer for composting, said: “By offering residents the chance to enter a competition to win a garden shredder we hoped to encourage more people to use garden shredders to deal with their garden waste at home; and to produce a valuable product which can be used in their garden.”