Environment
Veolia defends co-mingled collectionsSimeon Goldstein, 8 January 2009Be the first to comment on this article Veolia Environmental Services, the waste management firm, has defended co-mingled packaging waste collections and predicted growth in mixed plastic and food waste streams and colour separation of glass at materials reprocessing facilities. In an exclusive interview with Packaging News, deputy chief executive Paul Levett said co-mingled recycling made life easier for consumers and would ultimately help increase the amount and quality of materials collected. “To achieve a 34% recycling rate, it’s been about dealing with the believers in recycling. To achieve future EU targets of 50% we have got to convince the agnostics by making recycling easy,” he said. Levett said that many councils wanted to include a wider range of plastics, but it would be difficult to achieve in the current economic environment. “We’ll need to wait for plastics values to pick up, which will start to happen as 2009 progresses.” He also defended energy from waste (EfW) as a valid option for waste disposal, but admitted there was much to do to convince the public. “For waste that can’t be recycled EfW makes a lot of sense, and the energy creation argument is a strong one. “But it’s unpopular as nobody wants to live next to a waste facility,” he said. The full interview with Levett will be published in the February issue of Packaging News magazine. Speak Your Mind |
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