British Airways has recently announced that they will be making a new deal with American Biofuel to create a plant in the UK that will recycle 500,000 tonnes of waste material into 16,000,000 gallons of fuel for them to use in their planes.

The new plant is the first time British Airways has made a move into the recycling market and will probably mean they will get big tax breaks from the government. The government has not comment on the deal yet but this will be seen as a major breakthrough for the green movement in Britain.

The new recycling plant will be built within the next two years after planning permission has been given and is expected to create up to 1200 jobs.

Flats in London are to have rubbish chutes updated and rubbish collection points moved closer to doorways to encourage more people to correctly recycle waste, under new proposals by London Mayor, Boris Johnson.

The new plans are designed to reduce the amount of the capital’s waste going to landfill and help save money for councils and taxpayers.

In order to carry out these plans, Mr Johnson will urge the London Waste and Recycling Board to allocate funds to help adapt London’s flats.

The mayor of London has also published his waste strategy which includes writing to borough councils to help boost recycling rates. Apart from being good for the environment it’s hoped the new strategy will help avoid massive landfill taxes and more expensive council tax bills in the future.

Recent research has found that to get rid of the three million tonnes of waste produced in England and Wales over Christmas could cost councils as much as £78 million.

Up to as much as two thirds of this waste will end up at landfill costing local councils £40 per tonne in tax to the government.

In order to help deal with all this extra Christmas waste people are urged to recycle as much as possible and compost fruit and vegetable waste. It’s also important that people don’t buy more food than they actually need so less is thrown in the bin.

Across England and Wales, local councils are expected to deal with 230,000 tonnes of food, 10,000 tonnes of wrapping paper, 20,000 tonnes of Christmas cards and 25,000 tonnes of plastic packaging.

Many people are already keen on recycling their rubbish and these figures remind us why its so important to do so.

Batteries that are thrown in the bin amount to a large amount of the waste that ends up at Britain’s landfills. Once at landfill batteries leak dangerous chemicals into the soil which will cause damage to the environment. To try and avoid these problems strict guidelines and regulations have been set for companies that produce and manufacture batteries in the UK.

The new Waste Batteries and Accumulators regulations state that any company that either imports or manufacturers at least 1 tonne of batteries in the UK will be responsible for sorting out the waste and recycling and cleaning up the mess. The amount they will have to recycle will depend on how much of the market they share. Each company that produces over a tonne of batteries will have to register with Environmental Agencies in the UK.

Companies that manufacture less than 1 tonne of batteries will not be held accountable by the new regulations although they must still register with the National Producer Responsibility Database.

Although building fires is illegal and dangerous in the UK many people are expected to have one on Bonfire night on the 5th November. As bonfires create waste a leading waste and recycling company, SITA has launched a campaign to educate people about the dangers of building fires but if they do have a fire where to recycle the waste.

This is the 4th year that SITA has launched a campaign to increase public safety and also allow UK residents to recycle their bonfire waste. The campaign warns that if illegal fires are spotted they will be put out immediately by the local fire and rescue services. Waste from bonfires can be taken to one of SITA’s sites where it will be sorted along their green materials.

The campaign also warned residents that illegal fires are a big risk to nearby houses and cars and should not be started, accidents can be avoided by attending an organized event.

Under new government plans to increase the amount of recycling that is done in the UK householders could be forced to have six bins and check through every piece of rubbish.

Under the new ‘zero waste’ plans there will be separate bins for plastic bottles, glass, cardboard, paper, tin and garden waste. There will also be a slop bucket in every kitchen for food waste. If people put the wrong items in the wrong bins then fines will be imposed by local councils of up to £500.

These new recycling measures are expected to become available by 2020. A new consumer campaign will also be launched which will explain exactly which materials should go in which bins.

The local government association said it would cost £1.1 billion to set up the new ‘zero waste’ scheme which would mean an extra £50 per year on the average council tax bill.

Currently in the UK over half of all rubbish is ending up at landfill which equates to a massive 62 million tonnes. With the new recycling measures in place the amount of waste going to landfill would be cut in half.

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A new report claims that more than £650 million is being lost by throwing away rubbish instead of recycling it.

Senior waste campaigner at Friends of the Earth, Dr Michael Warhurst recognises that recycling rates across the UK have improved but urged for more action. “Our low recycling rate means that we have to import more expensive resources like aluminium – this is economic madness when they could be recycled here and sold for a profit instead”.

“It’s time we recognised the real value of the materials we throw away every day. We only have one Earth and its resources are finite – making better use of them would save money and help tackle climate change.”

Friends of the Earth explained that approximately 24 million tonnes of recyclable goods are being incinerated or sent to landfill across European countries. The suggest more focus on recycling will significantly reduce carbon emissions and imports.

All this comes at a time when the economy is at a low point, a reset button has been pressed if you will. The old economy collapsed and now we can build and grow green, eco friendly ideas from the ground up.

We can eliminate the concept of waste through design, and that’s what is happening in many new green products now. The next economic boom will be full of efficient, recyclable and low wastage products along with new companies that will pay cash for recycling items like mobile phones and other gadgets.