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Steel packaging is being recycled in ever increasing volumes: the 2 million tonnes mark for recycled steel packaging was exceeded in 2002, representing an 8% growth in collected and recycled tonnage in Europe compared with the previous year. This means that the steel packaging industry has now reached its voluntary …

The town council of Kamikatsu, located in Tokushima Prefecture in Japan’s southwestern island of Shikoku, adopted the “Kamikatsu Township Zero Waste Declaration” on September 19, 2003. Japan for Sustainability (JfS)reports that the declaration states that the town has resolved to achieve zero waste by 2020 in order to bequeath clean …

Japanese RCS is an incorporated nonprofit organization located in Kyoto, Japan, that aims to promote a resource-circulating society. It collects used cooking oil from restaurants and households in Kyoto City and recycles it into clean and environmentally friendly bio-diesel fuel Japan for sustainability (JfS) reports that at present households and …

Farmers, horticulturalists, waste contractors and suppliers should start preparing now for new waste management controls for agriculture due in 2004. A comprehensive leaflet summarising the changes and opportunities along with other new information is released by the Agricultural Waste Stakeholders’ Forum. The new information includes: a summary document which highlights …

The Association of Cities & Regions for Recycling has issued a note on what is one of the first “Pay-as-you throw” experiences in a Spanish Municipality. Torrelles de Llobregat, a small Spanish town (4,100 inhabitants) in the area of Barcelona, has successfully implemented a “pay-as-you-throw” scheme for improving its municipal …

The Association of Cities & Regions for Recycling (ACRR) has published a study comparing the organisation of selective collection schemes, waste management costs and how these costs are allocated in several European national policies. The report is a helpful tool for policy-makers to identify key factors for waste management costs …

The Household Waste Recycling Bill has received Royal Assent to become an Act. The Private Member’s Bill, put forward by Joan Ruddock MP, was supported by Government in its passage through Parliament. The Bill provides that where English waste collection authorities have a duty to collect waste they shall ensure, …

The UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has invited local authorities to bid for £135m of funding that has been provided for waste minimisation and recycling work over the next two years. This is the latest tranche of funding being made available on a challenge fund …

The Danish Government has published a new Waste Strategy for the period 2005-2008. The strategy, which outlines the Government’s waste policy for the coming years, is founded on three cornerstones: prevention of the resource loss and environmental load associated with waste decoupling of the increase in the amount of waste …

In a hilltop in Venezuela’s capital Caracas, where hunger and crime are as common as tumbledown homes, Amarilis Chirinos is finding that the garbage strewn on the slum’s slopes has its uses. ENS reports that she and other residents of the western El Resplandor neighbourhood are flocking to exchange recyclable …