GARWER WasteXchange News

Danes extend drinks packaging deposit system Posted: 06 May 2008 06:44 PM CDT Denmark is to extend its national deposit-return system for drinks packaging to mineral water bottles with immediate effect, the environment ministry said on Monday. The scheme currently covers beer and some soft drinks. Around 100 million bottles of water are expected to be brought into the system annually. More types of soft drinks will also be covered, bringing in an additional 15 million containers, the ministry said. Importers, producers and retailers have until December to comply with the new rules. See [url=http://www.mim.dk/Nyheder/Aktuelt/20080505_kildevandspant.htm]government press release [/url](in Danish).

UK: Scarborough council opens £800,000 sorting facility Posted: 06 May 2008 06:40 PM CDT Scarborough borough council and recycling contractor Yorwaste have officially opened a £800,000 materials recycling facility at Seamer Carr, in North Yorkshire. [img]http://www.letsrecycle.com/resources/listimg/news/MRFs/Yorwaste_Seamer_Carr_MRF@large.JPG[/img] [i]The Resource Recovery Centre at Seamer Carr[/i] The state-of-the-art "[i]Resource Recovery Centre[/i]" is designed to process materials collected through the borough's commingled blue bin recycling scheme, introduced in October 2007. This includes paper, card, cans and plastic bottles. The facility contains a trommel, ballistic separator and hand picking stations and is capable of handling over 25,000 tonnes of materials a year. It is designed to be an improvement to a materials recycling facility which was opened at the site in 2004 ([url=http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listcatid=266&listitemid=5061]see letsrecycle.com story[/url]). Phil Bedford, Yorwaste's head of operations, said: "[i]This is a state-of-the-art facility, which offers Scarborough borough council the opportunity to recycle greater volumes of waste, while making it easier for residents to dispose of their recyclable rubbish responsibly[/i]." At the Seamer Carr site, there are already facilities for green waste composting, aggregates recycling, landfill and landfill gas power generation and a household waste recycling centre. Yorwaste has also received planning permission for a £4 million pyrolysis plant at the site, which is one of the projects supported by the government's New Technologies Demonstrator Programme ([url=http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listcatid=225&listitemid=8681]see letsrecycle.com story[/url]). A spokesman for the company revealed that it expected the facility would become operational this summer. He explained: "[i]The plant will convert 18,000 tonnes of domestic refuse a year from Scarborough into gas which will be used as a fuel to produce 2MW of electricity a year[/i]." [b]Leeds[/b] This week, Yorwaste also announced that is has won a three year contract for the disposal of street sweepings from Leeds council. The £750,000 contract will involve the collection of 8,000 tonnes of sweepings each year from the council's Kirkstall Road transfer station, after recyclable materials will be removed. Material will then be taken to Yorwaste's open windrow composting site at Harewood Whin, where it will be composted into an organic product for use in restoring the site's landfill. Tim Reay, Yorwaste's head of sales and marketing, said: "[i]We are very pleased to have been awarded this contract. Harewood Whin is now one of the largest organic waste composting sites in the UK, capable of producing some 50,000 tonnes of high-quality compost annually. This product is very popular with landscape architects and land reclamation specialists[/i]."

UK: Half of milk packaging Posted: 06 May 2008 05:05 AM CDT Plans to make half of milk packaging from recycled materials by 2020 have been unveiled today by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [img]http://www.letsrecycle.com/resources/listimg/news/plastics/HDPE-bottles@large.jpg[/img] [i]About 80% of milk sold by retailers is in plastic containers[/i] The Department has published a Milk Roadmap which lays down measures to reduce the environmental impact of producing, processing and consuming liquid milk. In terms of recycling, this includes replacing 10% of virgin plastics with recycled by 2010 or sooner, rising to 30% in 2015 and 50% in 2020. This is equivalent to reducing the tonnage of virgin material used in the sector by ultimately around 50,000 tonnes. Other goals include the development of centralised anaerobic digestion facilities for the processing of waste into energy and a vision of sending zero waste to landfill. The document was drawn up by a working group chaired by milk trade body Dairy UK, with membership from across the milk supply chain including feed and fertiliser manufacturers, farming organisations, processors, retailers and packaging suppliers. Minister for Food and Farming Jeff Rooker said: "The dairy industry has acted responsibly in the past to cut its environmental impact, and this Roadmap provides a major new tool to achieve that. Delivering on the targets contained in the document will be a significant achievement. I welcome the UK dairy industry's collaborative approach in developing this plan of action." Dairy UK Director General Jim Begg commented: "Dairy companies seized the challenge of the Road Map project from the start and have produced a series of very ambitious environmental targets for the sector. It is a major opportunity for us to demonstrate that we are about more than just 'green wash'." "I am proud of the measures that our industry has committed itself to, and proud that we are the first sector to draw up one of these ground breaking Road Maps. I believe we are setting an important example to other sectors and to the rest of the world," he added. [b]HDPE[/b] The Milk Roadmap - which also includes renewable energy and water reduction goals - builds on work by the Waste and Resources Action Programme to get more recycled HDPE used in milk bottles. At present, over 3 billion high-density polyethylene (HDPE) milk bottles are manufactured in the UK each year, using 120,000 tonnes of plastic. Last year, the organisation successfully trialled the use of clean recycled material in milk bottles sold by Marks and Spencer (see letsrecycle.com story) and has encouraged the development of other food-grade plastics recycling facilities, such as those being developed by firms such as Closed Loop London, Nampak plastics and Waste Exchange Services. The Milk Roadmap document said: "By ensuring that all milk packaging is restricted to recyclable or recoverable materials, processors will be able to target a "zero waste to landfill" vision. Provided that significant improvements are made to the reprocessing capacity, and that public attitudes towards recycling are altered to ensure correct behaviour, it is possible that an entirely closed loop system for milk product packaging use can be achieved." James Crick, Business Development Director for Nampak Plastics Europe, said:"Today's publication of the Milk Roadmap (Friday 2 May) is an important milestone for the dairy industry and one of the targets highlighted by Defra is that half of all milk packaging will be made from recycled materials by 2020. "We are pleased to have been involved in the Milk Roadmap's development and the targets set for the use of recycled content in packaging are ambitious. However, Nampak is confident that it is in a good position to meet these targets. We were instrumental in the production of the world's first recycled content HDPE bottle and have also committed to supplying all our UK manufactured milk bottles with up to 10% recycled content during 2008/09, ahead of the Milk Roadmap short term target of 10% by 2010," he added. [b]Anaerobic[/b] Alongside packaging, the Milk Roadmap sets down plans for the development of anaerobic digestion facilities to manage waste. In parallel with on-farm AD, Dairy UK has already been investigating the commercial and technical feasibility of exploiting centralised AD within the dairy supply chain throughout 2007. The centralised plants could co-treat waste from a variety of food-processing sites, alongside that from dairy processors, and generate digestate for re-use on dairy farms and energy for dairy processing. The document explained: "The model being explored by Dairy UK is to develop centralised systems based at or near to dairy processing facilities where there is a ready supply of organic waste (from onsite effluent treatment processes) and a demand for energy. "These systems would take advantage of the close proximity of the majority of dairy processors to primary producers by importing and co-digesting livestock manures with dairy processing waste."

Ireland doubles e-waste targets Posted: 06 May 2008 04:58 AM CDT New figures have revealed that Ireland more than doubled its EU electronic recycling target in 2007. Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Ireland has said it collected almost nine kilograms of WEEE per person in its area during the year. The figure is more than double the EU target set for Ireland in 2008 of four kilograms per person. Leo Donovan, chief executive of WEEE Ireland, said: 'WEEE Ireland would like to thank consumers for bringing back their old washing machines, cookers, computers, televisions and all other e-waste for recycling in 2007 and helping us achieve the 9kg figure for last year.' During 2007 the firm reported 28,000 tonnes of e-waste, or more than 100,000 items, collected. Seventy seven per cent was initially processed in Ireland with the remainder going to WEEE treatment plants in the UK and Europe. WEEE Ireland is the largest national compliance scheme for electrical recycling in Ireland and was founded in 2005. It organises the processing and recycling WEEE on behalf of its members, covering 80% of the geographical area of the Republic of Ireland

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