International steel business Sheffield Forgemasters has reached a record recycling rate of 90 per cent, and has started making money from selling-on waste products for re-use.
After introducing a separation system called Integrated Waste Management (IWM), which enables significant volumes of rubbish to be recycled, and certain waste products to be collected and sold on, an average 815 tonnes of waste has been diverted from landfill each month.
In addition, the business has earned £50,000 in rebates from selling waste products including scale from furnaces, paper, cardboard and plastic. The fixed cost of Biffa's service is also almost half that of SFIL's previous supplier.
SFIL Group Environment Manager Victoria Hinchcliffe said: "Diverting waste from landfill is very important to us as part of our efforts to reduce our impact on the environment as much as possible." She added that the company had made significant improvements since starting work with waste management company Biffa ten months ago.
"The icing on the cake for us is that it is an improved service, but the fixed weekly costs are actually 46 per cent lower than our previous supplier," she went on.