Birmingham City Council announce new plans for business recycling scheme

• Mar. 7 by Rachael Giaramita (0)

Birmingham City Council has announced new plans for businesses wishing to take part in recycling schemes.

In response to a previous article by Birmingham Recycled – which centered on the lack of support available to businesses – Jeremy Sheilds from the recycling department of the council stated:

“Around 300 businesses have colour-separated glass collected, and a number of locations have services for paper and cardboard.

However, these initiatives are relatively small, and much remains to be done.

I am setting out brief details of two initiatives which are in hand currently.”

New Plans

A new partnership plan has also been announced called the Birmingham Environmental Partnership which is funded to help hundreds of businesses learn what services would be attractive and useful to to help them be more environmentally friendly way.

The recycling stem of the initiative is supported by the Low Waste Partnership which has seen the council teaming up with other organisations in the public and private sector to assist the implementation of a future recycling service design for businesses.

New Partnerships

One of these partnerships is with comapny Urban Mines that hopes to aid the council in re-educating businesses to  help reduce waste emissions and revamp their work practice.

Urban Mines is a team of Environmental Specialists, committed to finding practical and innovative solutions to resource management.

What has been planned?

The company will be involved in a new workshop scheme that will focus on the restaurant industry and aims to support, with readily available advice and information, restaurants wishing to achieve a higher green status and promote change in their company’s practice.

There will be a number of free workshops commencing March 24th at the Mint restaurant, Birmingham. The new initiative hopes to set up a reward scheme for restaurateurs, which will see the restaurant that has been most successful in redesigning their waste management given the Green Restaurant Award.

What is the response?

Birmingham Recycled took this response to Erdington to see what businesses thought of the council’s aims.

Adam Cross from York Cafe said:

‘This sounds like a good idea, but I hadn’t heard anything about the scheme, I think perhaps the council might want to think about publicising this event a little more if they want any businesses to turn up.’

Lorn Langdon of Paperchasers a leading figure in recycling also commented:

‘I think there could be much more done by having more information and advice on the councils website for businesses.

They (the council) may not want to promote any service in particular, as they can’t be seen to favour any one supplier, but they should be able to sign-post and link to the WRAP website and their free searchable database of recycling contractors and provide some free downloadable resources to help businesses.’

To read more of the interview with Lorn click here.