DEFRA figures show Stockport has highest recycling rates

[wolfman]

Household rubbish put out for recycling is dumped in landfill sites or sent to incinerators by three out of four councils, it has been reported.
Councils admitted destroying more than 100,000 tons of recyclable waste, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Medway, Peterborough and Reading councils had the worst figures, with each failing to recycle more than 10% of what was collected.
Pembrokeshire Council revealed that 19% of kerbside recycling ends up in landfill, while Derbyshire County Council said 30% of recyclable cans would not be reprocessed.
The councils who responded to the investigation said 100,503 tons of recyclable waste was dumped in landfill or sent to incinerators in the last financial year.
If the figure is taken as representative of all the councils in England and Wales then the actual total could be nearly 200,000 tons, the newspaper found.
This leaves councils with a large landfill tax bill, with the current £32 per tonne rate rising to £40 per tonne in the next financial year. The cost of throwing away goods put out for recycling was therefore estimated at £6.4 million, and could increase to £8 million.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs denied that the investigation demonstrated a problem with recycling.
He said: "Figures published in November show that 90% of local authorities are meeting or exceeding their recycling targets. England alone recycled 9.7 million tons of municipal waste in 2007/8.
"It's vital that we all continue to recycle what we can as the last thing we want is for recyclable materials to end up in landfill."

from the press association.

[wolfman]

Waste recycles into 5,000 jobs
Ben Rooth
20/12/2008


FIVE-thousand jobs are to be created in a £3bn deal to revolutionise the way Greater Manchester deals with waste.

The money would pay for a massive construction programme, including five biological treatment plants using special bacteria where rubbish would be converted into electricity to power 10,000 homes.

Gas which can be used to generate electricity is created as the waste is broken down.

Three other sites would be built where rubbish normally destined for landfill would be compacted and packaged for recycling, while four new composting sites would process hundreds of thousands of tons of garden and food waste every year.

Seventeen of the region's 25 household recycling centres would also be refurbished. The package will be worth £3bn over 25 years and create 5,000 jobs in construction - on top of the extra 100 staff needed to run the new sites.

Experts claim it would give Greater Manchester some of the best waste management facilities in the world and slash the proportion of rubbish going to landfill from 60 per cent to 23pc.

Approval

Waste chiefs do not expect any backlash from residents near the new sites since most of them are already used for waste disposal.

Friends of the Earth have also given their approval to the useof the biological technology which would be used to treat waste.

The deal - between the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority, waste management specialists Viridor and construction giant John Laing - will be signed off within weeks, the M.E.N. understands.

The consortium won the contract to deal with Greater Manchester's waste in 2007 and is in the final stages of raising the cash.

The biological treatment plants would be based at existing plants at Cobden Street, Salford; Arkwright Street, Oldham; Reliance Street, Manchester; Longley Lane, Sharston and at Bredbury in Stockport.

Neil Swannick, chairman of GMWDA, said: "We believe that it will be the best waste management contract in Europe. It will be the best solution for reducing greenhouse gases and create a large number of jobs in the construction and supply chains. In view of the economic downturn, these jobs will be coming when we need them most."

GMWDA chief executive Paul Dunn added: "This deal represents one of the most significant investments in this type of waste infrastructure and will create some of the best facilities in the world."

Mr Dunn anticipates that the number of staff - including bin dustmen and support personnel - employed by GMWDA will increase from 650 to 750.

from MEN

[wolfman]

Figures recently released by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) show Stockport Council has the highest recycling rates out of every metropolitan borough council in the country.
 
 
 
According to the statistics, Stockport Council is currently recycling 35.37% of all its waste. The next highest metropolitan council in the list is Rotherham which has a recycling rate of 35.04%.

Changes made by the Council over the last year have helped to increase the recycling rates. In April, blue bins were rolled out to 30,000 households making it easier for people to recycle paper and card.

In 2009, residents will see further improvements being made to their recycling and refuse collections with the blue bin scheme being expanded to most properties across the borough. Brown bins will also be delivered and householders will be able to recycle glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles, food tins and drink cans.

Councillor Stuart Bodsworth, Executive Member for the Environment, said: “Thanks to all residents who are recycling as much of their waste as possible. It is their efforts which have helped us achieve this. It is excellent to see Stockport is doing so well on a national level as well as being the top performing local authority for recycling in Greater Manchester. Over the next two years improvements are being made to the way recycling and waste is collected and hopefully this will send our recycling rates soaring even higher.”

For further information about recycling in Stockport go to www.stockport.gov.uk/waste