What happens to the rubbish that leaves your home or business? In the UK, a lot of it is incinerated.
Energy-from-waste vs. Incineration. What's the difference?
Posts about Waste (2):
The evolving role of the waste contractor
For those of us who’ve worked in or with the waste industry for a while, it certainly feels like times are changing. A public obsession with single use plastics, rallying cries for better food waste segregation and management, and the emergence of the new agenda in town: the circular economy.
So what does this mean for the oft maligned waste management contractor? How does its role need to adapt and evolve to respond to the progressively more outspoken ethical consumers?
RWM: Is my waste contractor ripping me off?!
Around 20,000 recycling, waste, resources and sustainability professionals will head to Birmingham’s NEC for RWM Exhibition on 12-13 September 2018. The industry’s most influential names and organisations will attend to discover the environmental innovations shaping the sector.
Join us at stand 4G101. We're also hosting two rather distinct seminars on Wednesday and Thursday...
The Chinese Sword and all hell has broken loose
No, this is not an article about ninja warriors but about how Chinese policies on waste have impacted recycling and waste management in the UK (and elsewhere).
A bit of history...
Why don’t we have food waste collections across the UK?
The recent report from the Renewable Energy Association (REA) that Defra was not considering mandatory food waste collections in England will disappoint many and make others happy.
The losers will be the Anaerobic Digestion (AD) and compost plants, starved of quality food waste to treat, with many close to bankruptcy. The winners will be the landfill and incinerator operators that will have another 4-5 million tonnes of food waste annually to burn or dump. And with waste producers paying some £120 a tonne to send the waste to their plants, it adds up to a significant amount of money.
In between the winners and losers are the councils. As LARAC (The Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee) quite rightly say...
An A-Z glossary of waste definitions
A list of acronyms and initialisms for waste. These abbreviations and acronyms are all common to the waste industry, however be aware that when used in other contexts they may mean something completely different...! This glossary is one of many free learning resources provided by Ditto Sustainability; you can view the growing boxset of free content here.
On with the acronyms...OK BANANA...
UN World Environment Day 2018: Beat Plastic Pollution
World Environment Day (WED) is an event that has been running since 1974 and is regarded as the ‘UN's most important day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment’. Each year the event has a host country and a theme. This year’s theme was unsurprisingly, ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’ and giving up single-use plastics; hosted in India.
Giving up single-use plastics is amicable, but it's a polluted drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things...
How much do we actually recycle? It cannot be possible!
The consultancy Eunomia published a report recently which lifts the lid on declared recycling figures.
Their analysis finally gives some data credibility to what many of us already intuitively knew... ...it cannot be possible that we recycle half our waste in the UK...
Beyond Earth Day 2018 and The Plastics Pact: to End Plastic Pollution
The world's largest environmental movement. And a good week for plastics? Earth Day (organised by the Earth Day Network) is a global event; it all started in 1970 when millions of people took to the streets to protest about the negative impacts of industrial development and how it was impacting the earth! Earth Day is now a recognised day of political action and civic participation. This year took place on Sunday 22 April, and focused on ending Plastic Pollution.
But what about beyond Earth Day...?