Be Eco Friendly

A new recycling plant in northeast England will be the first to accept different kinds of plastic. The site at Redcar, Teesside, is the first of its kind that will allow yoghurt pots, bags, bottles and other forms of plastic to be recycled at the same location.

The £1.87 million project, which is being run by Wrap and Biffa Polymers, will also provide jobs for 28 members of staff from the area of high unemployment. The money for the scheme was released by the government-funded Wrap organisation in January after research revealed that different types of plastic could be recycled from the same skips.

The process sees all the plastics cleaned together before they are sorted into different sections depending on their colours and polymer types. It is hoped that the plant, which begins production in April, will be able to process 15,000 tonnes of rubbish this year, going up to 20,000 by next year.

The waste, which will arrive at the site from local councils, households and companies, will be tuned into everyday items such as office furniture, bottles, boxes and plant pots. The highest-grade plastic will go on to a specialist food-grade Biffa plant which will turn it back into milk bottles.

Junior environment minister, Lord Henley praised the scheme as a way to improve recycling and job opportunities in the northeast. He added that he hoped the idea will bring an end to the puzzle families face everyday about which plastic items and suitable for recycling.

Source: http://www.recycle.co.uk

Northern Ireland is to receive £2 million funding in an attempt to reduce the country’s waste and increase recycling and reuse. The news of the new cash injection brings the total amount of funding available for such schemes this year to over £6 million.

The money has been provided out of the Rethink Waste fund of NI’s Department of Environment. Speaking about the third round of funding, environment minister Edwin Poots said the move shows that properly handled waste can be a great asset to the economy in Northern Ireland. He added that recycling levels have increased greatly over the years but he still feels that more can be done.

The Rethink Waste project plans to divert around 28,500 tonnes of rubbish from landfill sites each year. Around 41 Northern Irish schemes were offered funding through the first two rounds this year. The money can be used to improve amenities at recycling centres or to spend on capital coast such as new bins or collections vehicles.

So far, the country has seen the introduction of brown bins for garden and food waste, plus compactors for centres and roll-on-roll-off skips. Recent figures reveal that NI is currently recycling around 35 per cent of household waste, but this must be increased to 50 per cent by 2020 under EU rules.

Source: http://www.recycle.co.uk/news/2801000.html

Please take a look at the following video – interesting, intriguing, worrying but worth an investment of just under 17 minutes of your life!

A team of scientists from the UK are to fit sat-nav censors to Greenland’s icecap in a bid to decipher how icebergs are formed. The researchers will fly helicopters over the country’s rapidly decreasing glaciers and drop off the low-power wi-fi transmitters so the path and shape of the ice can be tracked.

The forming of icebergs has traditionally be hard to measure as the nodes usually stop working or get misplaced as the ice crumbles away. These transceivers will however continue to work, even if part of the ice sheet they are on breaks away.

Glaciers in Greenland are thought to be particularly sensitive to climate change, especially those on the southeast edge of the ice sheet. Deep crevasses have however previously made it hard to fit the terrain with anything substantial enough to collate accurate data.

The work is being funded by the Natural Environ

Read more: http://www.recycle.co.uk/news/2798000.html

A new study by the Environment Agency has concluded that plastic bags are not as bad for the environment as previously thought. The organisation, which is charged with improving the green credentials of England and Wales, found that depending on how many times they are reused, different types of bags have different impacts on the environment.

As well as typical high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bags, the research also looked at low-density polyethylene (LDPE) products – often called “bags for life”- as well as non woven cotton bags made of polypropylene (PP).

The agency concluded that if a HDPE bag is reused for shopping, it will only have to be reused a few times to lessen its impact on the environment.  The bags can also redeem themselves further if they then go on to be used for other purposes such as lining bins.

A paper bag, however, must be reused three times and a LDPE bag four times in order to have a lesser impact that a HDPE bag which is not reused. The study also found that a cotton bag must be reused a shocking 131 times and a non-woven PP bag 11 times to reach the same status. These figures go up further if the HDPE bag is used as a bin liner.

The British Royal Family is officially taking a leaf out of the green book by making a conscious effort to reduce the impact of its travel arrangements on the environment. An advert went up this week on the monarchy website for a new Head of Travel, who would come up with a plan to reduce the carbon footprint of the UK’s most frequent flyers.

The job, which is advertised at paying between £55,000 and £75,000 a year, would however be a tricky act to manage. The Royals are looking to reduce both the cost and the environmental impact of their trips away, without compromising on duration, safety or quality.

An average of 3,000 official visits are taken by the royal household as a whole every year, with the bill always footed by the current government under a grant-in-aid scheme. Last year, it totalled no less than £7 million, an expense which the Royals claim they are keen to reduce.

Read more: http://www.recycle.co.uk/news/2795000.html

Thousands of tons of recycling carefully sorted by families in  Britain is being dumped illegally in the Third World.

A three-year investigation by the Environment Agency has uncovered a multi-million pound trade in shipping waste out of the country.

Investigators are now bringing prosecutions against 30 criminal gangs, with five cases already going through the courts.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358450/The-gangs-dumping-recycling-Third-World-All-effort-separating-rubbish-waste-time.html#ixzz1EgLOOAYg