News in Brief

WRAP's Recycled Paper Advocacy Team is claiming victory in persuading four more organisations to switch to using recycled paper, rather than virgin stock.

Energy firm Centrica, HM Revenue & Customs and the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen have joined the 600 organisations that have been advised by the team. The organisations being advised by WRAP together procure around 230,000 tonnes of paper each year, and WRAP said yesterday it has secured commitments to switch 70,000 tonnes of this to paper with a recycled content.

Jonathan Tame, who heads up WRAP’s Recycled Paper Advocacy Team, said: “There are significant environmental and business benefits to using recycled paper, and it also helps to stimulate increased market demand. Reducing the amount of paper consumed together with buying recycled also has a direct beneficial effect on reducing landfill.”

The new CCTV system from Avery Weigh-Tronix allows cameras to log vehicle number plates

A new weighbridge capable of reading car number plates has been launched by West Midlands firm Avery Weigh Tronix.

The system, designed to reduce vehicle queuing and improve data records, weighs and processes vehicles after the number plate is recognised on CCTV and stored.

Campbell Deas, general manager for Avery Weigh-Tronix, said: “In the era of the Landfill Allowance Tax, waste has to be traceable so organisations involved in disposal must be certain about the type of waste being tipped, where it comes from and how much is in each load. Developments such as Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology automate date entry for a simpler and faster operation.”

A waste management company in Wales was fined 54,000 earlier this month for polluting rivers in its handling of waste from water treatment company Welsh Water.

Carmarthen-based Agresol Ltd also saw two of its directors fined 3,000 each, and was ordered to pay 2,500 in costs by Ammanford magistrates after pleading guilty to the incident. Agresol had been contracted to spread sewage sludge from the Felindre water treatment works on agricultural land as a soil conditioner, but the waste was allowed to run off into rivers in the Llangyfelach and Llandybie areas.

Due to the severity of the pollution, Environment Agency Wales prosecuted Agresol under both waste management and water pollution legislation. An Agency spokesperson said: “We will not tolerate the pollution of our streams and rivers or the mis-management of waste. We were very pleased at the levels of fines imposed by the court and hope that this serves as a lesson to others.”

The Dooson excavator weighs approximately 23 tonnes and is powered by a 110kW engine

Birmingham scrap metal recycler H W Taroni Metals has bought a new scrap-handling machine as part of a 1 million investment programme.

The Doosan Daewoo Solar 225LC-V tracked excavator, which was supplied by local dealer Murley Construction Equipment, has been specially modified with a high cab and longer arm to give the operator a better view of the grab attachment on a confined site.

Now the Doosan excavator accounts for about a third of H W Taroni's turnover and can even cleanly extract engines. Purchaser Russell Taroni said: “The machine copes with anything we put in front of it.”

The producer compliance scheme market for electronics is beginning to swell as the time for companies to register draws ever closer.

Last week saw WEEECare.com, an offshoot of waste management company WasteCare, become the latest scheme to offer its services to producers of electronic equipment.

Speaking at its launch WeeeCare.com Kevin Bray, chief executive, said; “The costs of compliance have been overblown by most compliance schemes because they have had no experience of WEEE recycling and little understanding of the economic drivers in the industry. We have over 20 years experience of recycling electronic equipment and have the most effective and cost efficient collection and treatment process in the UK.”