Last week the company we normally use to collect out paper sacks and cardboard boxes for recycling told us that they could no longer collect paper sacks. Apparently the paper mill they normally sell to would no longer take paper sacks, so they asked us to only collect cardboard boxes. This caused a huge problem in our factory, as it meant that paper sacks had to be thrown in the bin again and we get through a lot of paper sacks! One of the major problems was that paper sacks from unit 2 are normally thrown straight in the compactor at the point of generation – now they had to be separated from the cardboard and thrown in the bins which not only ruined the system but caused a lot of disorganisation.

Clearly the situation had to be resolved, as we could not operate effectively if we had to go on separating paper from cardboard. So I spoke to another recycling company, Severnside, who told me that they could take our bales of cardboard and paper sacks, they could take our plastic bales and they could provide sacks in which to put our office paper. Severnside will collect once a week and pick up all our material for recycling, regardless of quantity, for a fee of £10 per collection and a further charge of £1 a week to cover all the paperwork. This makes everything much simpler as we’ll only have to deal with one company for our recycling needs and we won’t have to store large numbers of bales on our site so the place should look much tidier! The collections should start in the next couple of weeks.