News in Brief

The former Reprotech site near Hastings, where the proposed waste facility will be located

Veolia Environmental Services has submitted plans for a new waste and recycling depot outside Hastings, capable of handling 85,000 tonnes of waste a year.

The waste management firm has applied to East Sussex county council to use a former refuse derived fuel plant on the Freshfields Road in Pebsham.

The facility, which is planned to be operation by April 2007, will take household recycling and residual waste under Veolia's 25-year waste management contract with East Sussex and Brighton and Hove councils. The company hopes to send the residual waste on to a proposed energy recovery facility at Newhaven, to combat a lack of landfill sites in East Sussex (see letsrecycle.com story).

Chris Maltbaek, managing director for Veolia South Downs, said: “The option of landfill is fast running out and there is no &#39d;o nothing' option. This facility will enable us to increase recycling and to start to recover energy from waste that is not recycled.”

Oxford city council has announced that the first area to join its new alternate weekly collection scheme has recycled almost 50% more waste than before.

Officers revealed this week that the amount of recyclables collected in green and blue boxes from 15,000 homes in the centre of the city have increased by 40 tonnes since the Autumn. The scheme is due to be rolled out to the whole city by the Spring.

Councillor Jean Fooks, executive member for a cleaner city, said: “This is an excellent first result. We know that some people have issues with the scheme and we are working with them to find solutions that work for their circumstances, but these figures show how well the vast majority are making use of the new recycling services.”

L-R: Steven Hesk, Golf Course Manager for Blackpool Council, Chris Hilton of Eco-Aggregates and June Armstrong, project manager at Emprise inspect recycled bunker sand on the 11th hole

A golf course in Blackpool is trialling bunker sand made out of recycled glass following the success of a local trade waste recycling scheme.

The Stanley Park Golf Course, on North Park Drive, is using material recycled by Fleetwood glass recycler Eco-Aggregates. The glass is collected by Blackpool-led initiative EMPRISE, which collects glass and metal from over a hundred businesses along the Fylde coast.

Steven Hesk, golf course manager, said: “It's a very interesting application for recycled glass. We have used it in one bunker on the course and it looks fine. It's a very imaginative solution, and if the trial is successful, I can see that it would have distinct environmental benefits.”

More than 100 trees are set to be planted across Sandwell thanks to a successful aluminium recycling campaign.

Aluminium packaging producers' organisation Alupro promised a tree for every tonne of aluminium as part of its Tree Aid appeal. Nearly 700 tonnes of empty food, drink and aerosol cans as well as clean aluminum foil were gathered in Sandwell through collections from homes and recycling banks.

Now 133 trees are being offered to schools and public spaces across the borough, with 17 native species trees being donated for planting in Burkina Faso, Africa. Cllr Mahboob Hussain, cabinet member for neighbourhoods, said: “This is a fantastic achievement by residents, which will see a greener borough and also help a project in Africa.”

L-R: Cardiff's MRF manager Ray Harrison, and reclamation and development manager Ian Taylor with Robert Jenkins, recycling projects manager at Corus and the new baler.

Corus has helped to boost steel can recycling in Cardiff by providing baling equipment to its new state-of-the art materials recycling facility in Rumney.

The technology allows the council to store and transport its 700 tonnes of steel cans a year which are collected through kerbside recycling collections, to the Corus steel plant in Port Talbot.

Councillor Elgan Morgan , Cardiff's executive member for environment and transport, said: “With this new baler in place we are now able to process the steel cans collected throughout the county efficiently. The new equipment enables us to get more cans in a bale, increasing the speed of the process and allowing us to recycling the increasing amount of steel packaging being recycled.”