UK Flooring Company, Karndean International Limited has recently been fined £29,700 for not recycling and recovering its packaging between 2006-2008.

The case was brought to court by the Environment Agency under regulations which aim to cut the amount of waste going to landfill. The luxury flooring company which exports their products around the world said that they take their environmental regulations very seriously and would comply with the laws in the future.

Louise Goatcher who investigated the case for the Environment agency, told the court that the agency contacted the company in 2009 after they didn’t register with the annual compliance scheme. After investigating further they found that the company also hadn’t registered in the years 2006 – 2008. She added that it wasn’t fair for the Environment too suffer because of companies like Karndean.

Pat Mcdonald, Managing Director of Karndean said the company accepted the court ruling and that the correct procedures will be followed in the future.

The London Environment Committee is going to investigate why there are such wide variations in household recycling rates amongst the capital’s 33 boroughs.

The investigation will examine the financial incentives used in each borough to promote recycling, the methods used to manage waste and London resident’s attitudes towards recycling.

In 2008/2009, London’s recycling rates were amongst the lowest in the UK with only 29% of waste being recycled or composted correctly. Its hoped that the investigation will help to improve recycling rates in the future and also help reveal the impediments to using waste as a resource.

According to figures from the Environment Department, the London borough of Newham got the lowest household recycling rate of just 15.4% in 2008/2009 whilst the best performing council was Bexley with a rate of 50.25%. According to the figures 4 other London boroughs got over 40% and nine more got over 30%.

New research that has been carried out by the Travel Foundation and ABTA has found that although many British people recycle at home they are completely forgetting to recycle when they are on holiday.

Of the people in the survey 90% of them said that although they recycled paper, cans and bottles at home only half of them would consider recycling on holiday. 1 in 5 people even said that they wouldn’t consider the environment at all whilst they are abroad.

A new national campaign ‘make holidays greener’ is being run by The Travel Foundation to try and make people aware of the environment whilst they are away like they are at home. Ideas that will be promoted to tourists include shopping in local markets, not having towels washed everyday and taking short showers.

A third of respondents in the poll said accommodation abroad did not provide information about how to protect the environment whilst there. People also said that they were confused about what is meant by green or sustainable travel.

The European Recycling Platform (ERP) has created an educational video for teachers around the UK to use when informing pupils about the importance of battery recycling.

The video follows a 12 year old as he uses batteries in his toy car, when they have run out he takes them to school so they can be recycled correctly. Once he has handed them in they are taken to recycling centre in France for the materials to be harvested and recycled. Its estimated that half of all toys in the UK require batteries so by providing battery recycling drop off points in schools is a great way to teach kids to protect the environment.

Battery collection points are already being used at schools in Glasgow, Ayrshire, Cornwall, London, Kent, Richmond and Berkshire.

Scott Butler, General Manager of ERP said that children are some of the biggest users of batteries in the UK.

The video can be found here along with teaching material and a free collection box.

A new man-made island will be built in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and San Francisco constructed completely out of recycled materials.

The island will help clean up the area, create a new home for local climate refugees and help re-use toxic ocean dumped plastics. It will be developed by innovative architectural company WHIM and will become a floating eco tourist destination complete with buildings, beaches and farms.

Once completed the new island will be the ultimate in eco-tourism with 4 thousand square miles of plastic land for communities to live on.

The developers say that the main aspect to making the project possible is that seaweed must be cultivated as a means of food and medicine. Seaweed will also provide a habitat for local wildlife and help to absorb CO2 that is produced on the new island.

A new £900m incinerator that will take 25 years to complete has recently been approved in North Yorkshire.

The new recycling facility is expected to save tax payers up too as much as £320m as the government has just started to fine local councils for throwing rubbish into landfill sites.

Many residents, campaigners and even local parish councillors have pleaded with the council to reject the proposal which is the biggest contract ever awarded in North Yorkshire. However the scheme has been approved after council officials stressed that maintaining any current waste management schemes was no longer an option after the government announcement that they would raise landfill tax.

The new incinerator will be built in Allerton near Harrogate and will create 70 new jobs. The new facility will allow local councils to hit 50% waste recycling targets by 2020.

Many new technologies will be used at the plant including a mechanical sorting machine and an anaerobic digestion system for food waste which will produce green energy for local use. There will also be a thermal treatment plant which will use waste to make thermal energy to power 40,000 homes in the local area.

According to recent figures published by the Environment Agency the UK’s 6 battery compliance schemes have collected just 8.58% of waste portable batteries in the first quarter of 2010. This figure is below the 10% target set for the year as a whole.

There are currently many questions being asked about the amount of publicity needed to encourage the general public to recycle more batteries. The coalition government is cutting back on publicity campaigns with Defra’s Christmas 2009 campaign being its 1st and last. Unfortunately many battery schemes look like they will have to promote on their own with only a little support from retailers.

Battery recycling rules started on January 1st 2010 and require battery distributors / retailers to collect 10% of the batteries they put out on the market in 2009. The figures that have been collected for the first quarter of this year as being seen as tricky to base forecasts on how the rest of the year will turn out. However some in the sector think that the chances of the UK hitting the targets that have been set by the EU batteries directive is increasing unlikely.

Batteries Project Manager at the Environment Agency, Bob Mead said “I am not disappointed by the figures. One set of data is insufficient to make predictions for the year.” He added “The government in its impact assessment suggested historic recycling rates of 2-3% a year for portable batteries, so 8% in the first quarter of 2010 can’t be a bad start.”

According to Wandsworth Borough Council in South London the majority of people are still not aware that mobile phones and other electrical devices can be recycled.

In order to mark this week’s Recycle Week the council in Wandsworth will make its environmental experts available to answer recycling questions from the public. People in the area can use this opportunity to find out about the advantages of recycling electrical devices which include environmental benefits and helping them to earn extra money.

People who choose to recycle their old mobile phones and other small electrical devices will be in a much better position to upgrade to the latest models.

In order to make recycling easier in the area Wandsworth Borough Council have also recently been awarded a £5 million recycling fund to improve and create new recycling in flats and other high rise buildings.

Recycle your old mobile phones here

According to a poll conducted by leading waste management firm SITA UK it has been found that educating people about how to recycle is the best way to boost recycling rates.

46 respondents took part in the poll, 56% thought education was the key to improving recycling rates, 31% said incentives was the best method and 11% thought fines was the best way to boost rates.

A spokesman for SITA UK, Anthony Durston said “The results of the poll make it clear that education was believed to be the key in recycling practices.”

The results of this survey were released just a week after the new UK coalition government completely dropped Labour’s plans to introduce fines in favour of an incentive based approach.

According to new government plans wheelie bins will be fitted with microchips in order to boost recycling rates.

The government has backed new plans to fit Household bins with microchips which will then be weighed when they are collected. Householders that put waste to be recycled will be rewarded with points that can be redeemed for vouchers up to £130 per year.

For each kilo of recyclable waste that is put out households will be rewarded with 5.5 points.

Chairman of the Environmental Board for the Local Government Association, Gary Porter said that the new scheme had already been rolled out in the borough’s of Windsor and Maidenhead but warned against a nationwide programme. He said that local councils should be able to choose if they implement an incentive programme as it could be hard to implement in places like blocks of flats where they only have a single bin.

Recycling rates in the UK have significantly improved in the last six years. Last year alone over 11 million tonnes of waste was recycled in comparison to just 5.2 million tonnes in 2003/4.