Paper Round secures “largest ever contract”

The award, which covers a five-year period with a possible extension, gives the firm responsibility for the office waste and recycling needs of 14,000 members of staff who currently produce up to 1,500 tonnes of waste a year.

As part of the deal, Paper Round is aiming to help Transport for London (TfL) to increase its office recycling rate from a current 20% to 65%

And, by combining this with all TfL's residual waste being sent to London's two energy-from-waste plants – Selchip at Lewisham and London Waste at Edmonton – it hopes to allow TfL to reach 'zero-waste-to-landfill' within three months of the contract starting.

Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Paper Round managing director Bill Swan confirmed that the contract was the firm's “largest ever”, and added that “to achieve a recycling rate of 65% plus will require partnership working and a programme to promote recycling”.

Mr Swan explained that this would involve Paper Round promoting its services at all 44 properties, as well as bringing its own 'recycling champions' into offices to look at issues such as the position of recycling bins.

Facilities

The TfL contract will see the firm providing one paper recycling bin for every 10 members of TfL staff, one can and plastic bin for every 24 workers and, at four TfL sites with canteens, food recycling facilities.

Mr Swan added that these food recycling services could be introduced elsewhere within the TfL property portfolio, explaining that: “As the contract moves forward and we want to move the rate above 65%, we'd look to roll it out to those with kitchen facilities”

As with the other businesses in the Greater London area that Paper Round provides services for, recyclables will be transported to the firm's “simple sorting facility” in Rainham, to allow for processes such as the hand-sorting of cardboard from paper collections.

From there, waste paper will be sent to M-Real's paper mill in Kent to be reprocessed into new office paper, which Mr Swan described as a “closing the loop story”, while glass will go to Berrymans in Kent, the cardboard to mills in the North of England and newspapers to Sweden, while the food waste will be composted at the Rainham site.

As a result, Mr Swan claimed that 99% of the recyclables would be processed within Western Europe.

Greater London

Paper Round now handles recycling and waste management for 3,500 businesses in the Greater London area, and Mr Swan enthused: “The business has grown at 30% every year for the last five years”

He added: “The big deal this year is that we can offer integrated recycling and waste contracts for the first time”

With the company now established in the capital, Mr Swan revealed that “we're looking into expansions into cities like Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester”, but added that “we can only use the current Paper Round model in big cities”.

He explained that this was because the firm's collections vehicles needed to do 20-25 pick-ups a day, something that would not be possible in less built-up areas.