English

A recent survey by the UK plastic bottle recycling organization RECOUP shows that British local authorities collected 200 million bottles (more than 10,000 tonnes) during 1998, an increase of 42 per cent since 1997. There are 186 collection schemes for plastic bottles in the UK, with 3,354 at 2,275 sites. …

European Declaration on Paper Recovery A European declaration on paper recovery has been launched by the Confederation of Paper Industries (CEPI) and the European Recovered Paper Association. The declaration aims to ensure the optimum management of used paper and board products, improvement in the quality of recovered paper and a …

“The world’s population increased last year by 78 million, and is expected to reach six billion by October 1999, according to the annual report of the Washington, US-based Population Institute. Family -Planning programmes around the World have helped cut birth rates in many countries , but a dozen of the …

“Texaco have declared plans to build a gasification plant for converting mixed plastics waste into fuel at a facility in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Euwid Recycling & Waste Management reports that Texaco predicts a gate fee of NLG250 per tonne for the waste, delivered to the 40.000 tonnes per year plant.”

ELV Plastics Separation Systems Planned Recycling plastics from scrap cars will become ever more important in Europe, as the recent legislation on end of life vehicles (ELVs) is implemented. The law prescribes that by 2015 at least 95 per cent (by weight) of an ELV must be recoverable. Multinational car …

Tyre Recycling Advance Research into the feasibility of using powerful, short electric pulses to separate metal and rubber components found in tyres has been carried out at Shevehenko University in Kyiv, Austria. Scrap Tyre News Online reports that new techniques are set to reduce energy consumption in the recycling process …

People on the garbage dumps of Cairo: a toxicological in vivo model? Marth E, Sixl W, Bencko V, Medwed M, Lapajne S, Voncina E, Brumen S Institute of Hygiene of the Karl-Franzens University of Graz, Austria. In the outskirts of Cairo, some 40,000 people live on garbage dumps. These people …

Incineration: health and environmental consequences. Gochfeld M UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Piscataway, USA. Incineration is considered one of the four primary ways to manage solid wastes, in conjunction with source reduction and reuse, recycling-composting, and landfilling. Incineration is currently used to destroy household and institutional solid waste, hazardous chemical …

New legislation in England and Wales now entitles local authorities to take action to prevent waste arisings, a task previously outside their powers. The Waste Minimisation Act allows local authorities to incorporate waste minimisation into their waste plans, promote waste prevention services, adopt waste reduction targets in waste contracts and …

The US National Soft Drink Association have reported that the recycling rate for soft drink containers reached 58.7 per em cent in 1997. Americans recycled 51.9 billion soft drink containers in 1997, a new record (up by 3.5 billion containers since 1996). the 51.9 billion units recycled last year included …