There often seems to be negative news associated with waste services for business. Some seeing this is a service they have to pay for as a necessary evil whilst thinking “this should be free to the ratepayer”. Let‘s leave that behind, just for a few minutes and look with fresh eyes at what is succeeding in the commercial waste sector.
Farmers and fruit & veg producers in Shropshire are finding great success with their waste plastics and cardboard packaging. For years businesses like these have been transporting this waste to be further processed in skips and lorries where much of the vehicles load had wasted space due to the containers being empty. Over time, technology has progressed well and they looked at card and plastic recycling balers.
These superb machines have reduced the costs of rubbish disposal by 50% for one of the companies. This is a great result for them and a bullseye for the environment.
More good news is found in the Nottingham area where licensees are given the opportunity to extend the quality of the business waste disposal services to reduce the amount of recyclable rubbish being taken to landfill. The idea is to reduce the fee imposed on regular waste removal and adding a mixed recycling service where there wasn’t anything before. Success indeed!
It looks like Nottingham is busy saving the environment again. The ongoing project, Scrapstore, rescues waste out of the jaws of the landfill and sells it on as craft materials.
These canny volunteers have a keen eye for useful waste and collect it by the bagful for it to benefit schools and other organisations. They make themselves available to dish out free advice to budding artists or other creative people wanting ideas on re-using this valuable rubbish. Any money made from this recycling goes to fund a play scheme for Nottingham kids.
Granted, these success stories are normally related to recycling business materials which often attracts more interest but non recyclable items are just more difficult to turn into good hard cash.
Of course, these stories are just a drop in the ocean in global terms but every little saving counts.