Comedian Dave Spikey has helped launch a groundbreaking recycling plant by urging people to take more care over what they put in their bins.

The award-winning comic, from Bolton, made the plea as he toured the £12m Materials Recovery Facility, in Sharston, Wythenshawe.

The plant is more efficient than existing services – it will process 16 tonnes of recycled waste an hour and 90,000 tonnes a year.

And Dave, who co-wrote Phoenix Nights with Peter Kay, is now spearheading a campaign to cut the amount of waste that cannot be recycled which is put into recycling bins. A crowbar, a stretch of hosepipe and a basketball are among items that have been wrongly sent to the facility – along with unrecyclable yoghurt pots, food trays and plastic bags.

Dave said: “Recycling is the one thing we can do that has a huge impact on the environment. We all have to do our bit and it’s important to do it right.”

The campaign has been launched on behalf of Recycle for Greater Manchester, which has built the new facility.

Hi-tech machines sort through waste and split up the different plastics and metals using lasers and magnets.

Just five people at a time pick out products that cannot be recycled – much fewer than in other recycling centres.

It means that just 5pc of what goes into the facility end up in landfill. But recycling bosses are trying to reduce this figure by asking people to take more care of what they put in the recycling bin.

Coun Neil Swanwick, chairman of GMWDA, said: “We want to reduce this further and are encouraging people put the right materials into the right bin.”

Stephen Jenkinson, chief executive of waste management firm Viridor Laing, said: “We’re really proud of this facility – it’s the best of its type in the country. This is about making people sharper about what they recycle.”

An information pack featuring the comedian will soon drop through letterboxes. It will tell people some of the common items that are often mistakenly put into recycling bins.

Recycle for Greater Manchester is a partnership between the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority and Viridor Laing (Greater Manchester) Limited.

Source: MEN

Fly-tipping has declined in England in the past year, according to government figures.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has revealed that the number of incidents of illegally dumped waste in England fell by nearly one-fifth (18.7%) to 947,000, following a 9% decrease the previous year. In total, there were 2,460 prosecution actions carried out in 2009-10, of which 97% achieved a successful outcome such as a fine.

The figures are the latest from Flycapture – the national database of fly-tipping incidents and enforcement action which was set up by Defra, the Environment Agency and the Local Government Association to record the volume of incidents and cost of illegally dumped waste dealt with by local authorities.

Environment minister Lord Henley said: “We’re encouraged by the efforts being made by local authorities to tackle fly-tipping but there is no room for complacency. A total of nearly 947,000 incidents is unacceptable by any standards and fly-tipping is clearly still a significant problem. We must all work together to stamp out this continuing blight on our neighbourhoods.”

Of the other findings, nearly half (49%) of all fly-tips cleared by local authorities took place on public roads and highways – a 21% reduction on the previous year. And one-third (33%) occurred on council land and footpaths and bridleways – a 20% reduction on the previous year.

Individuals appear to be responsible for much of the illegal tipping, with 58% of all rubbish cleared recorded as being the size of a car boot-load or a small van. And 63% of fly-tips dealt with by local authorities involved household waste including food.

The estimated cost of clearance of illegally dumped waste reported by local authorities in this period was £45.8m – a reduction of £9.2m compared to 2008-09.

Local authorities increased their enforcement actions in 2009-10 by 2.3% on 2008-09, which also involved higher costs. It is estimated that local authorities spent £19.1m on enforcement action against fly-tipping in 2009-10 (an increase of around 4.3% over 2008-09 expenditure).

The improvements were welcomed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which has highlighted the problems of fly-tipping through its Stop the Drop campaign, spearheaded by its president, Bill Bryson. In the past Bryson has said: “Fly-tipping in particular is a scandal and what is almost as much a scandal is that people are getting away with it.”

Samantha Harding, CPRE’s Stop the Drop campaign manager, said of the latest figures: “These results show that councils are making real progress in the fight against fly-tipping. They show that a consistent approach to dealing with fly-tipping through prevention and enforcement can lead to real savings to the public purse. With councils now facing budget pressures we hope that they will not stop their drive to end fly-tipping but step it up as a way to cut costs in the long run.”

But she said the statistics were only part of the overall picture, as they only cover fly-tipping on public land: ” The £45.8m bill for dealing with fly-tipping would be significantly higher if you added the costs incurred by farmers and other private landowners who have to clear up fly-tipping at their own expense.”

Helen Bingham, spokesperson from anti-litter charity Keep Britain Tidy said: “Fly-tipping makes our communities look neglected and the cost of clearing dumped waste is still too high. Places strewn with old sofas, fridges and bin bags feel run down and have a negative impact on the people who live and work there.There are recycling centres across the country and many councils offer a collection service. There is no excuse for fly-tipping.”

Source: The BBC

Love him or hate him, blonde haired, bumbling, posho Boris Johnson wants to introduce a new scheme to the UK which rewards recycling efforts by handing out shopping vouchers to people.

Boris Johnson hopes the scheme rewards recycling households as he aims to cut the amount of rubbish going to landfill sites to zero within 15 years.

Johnson is backing a London-based trial of an American scheme called Recycle Bank, which gives householders shopping vouchers or donations to charity to the value of how much they recycle.

Johnson estimates a typical London household would make £14 a month under the scheme, one of a series of proposals contained in a draft municipal waste strategy.

Figures show the capital’s recycling rates lags behind both the rest of the UK and other international cities.

Johnson, who chairs the London Waste and Recycling Board, wants to save £90m per year through more recycling, better coordination and greater investment in less polluting technologies to either dispose of waste or convert it into a local source of energy.

Just 25% of the 4m tonnes of household waste generated each year by Londoners is recycled, with half going to landfill sites. The remainder goes to incinerators.

The cost of managing this waste is approximately £600m every year, with wide variations between boroughs’ recycling rates.

Johnson is writing to all London borough leaders to ask them to redouble their efforts in recycling and – with landfill rates set to increase from current associated costs of around £245m to £307m by 2013 – reminding them of pressure on future council tax bills if they fail to act.

The Tory mayor believes the carrot, rather than the stick, should be among the strategies applied to improve London’s ranking by rewarding those who opt to recycle rather than imposing penalties on those who don’t.

The American Recycle Bank scheme is in line with Conservative interest in the “nudge” theories of American sociologists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and has so far been adopted by Tory-led Windsor and Maidenhead council.

Other incentives to reduce landfill include schemes to encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable bags in an attempt to turn London into Britain’s first plastic bag-free city in time for the Olympics in 2012.

The mayor wants the capital to be recycling at least 45% of its municipal waste (which includes street litter, grass cuttings and some waste from small businesses as well as household waste) by 2015, rising to 60% by 2031, sending “zero municipal waste” directly to landfill by 2025, with any residue from other waste processing being banned from landfill by 2031.