Will Greenstar be Waste & Recycling Business of the Year?
Friday 28th August 2009
Fast-growing recycling-led waste management company Greenstar UK is in the running for a major industry award – and it could be a family affair at the awards ceremony as its Greenstar WES subsidiary is also shortlisted for an award, just months after receiving a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise (Innovation category).
Greenstar UK is one of six companies shortlisted in the Recycling and Waste Management Business of the Year category of the 2009 National Recycling Awards (NRAs), one of the waste and recycling industry’s major award schemes (www.nationalrecyclingawards.com). Plastic recycling innovator Greenstar WES is competing against three others in the Recycled Packaging of the Year category of the NRAs.
Greenstar UK CEO Ian Wakelin said the award nominations were ‘a tribute to the ingenuity, dedication and hard work of staff of both organisations’, adding “Greenstar is proud to make a tangible and growing contribution to reducing Britain’s waste, its carbon footprint, and its contribution to global warming.”
Headquartered in Aylesbury, Greenstar UK is one of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses in the sector. In 2007, it employed 180 staff: today, nearly 1,900 staff work for a business that operates from 38 locations, services almost 16,000 commercial sites, and provides recycling and refuse collection services for over one million homes.
In the past few years, Greenstar UK has invested millions in the collection and processing of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of domestic and commercial recyclable materials, including building one of Britain’s most modern materials recycling facilities near Birmingham. It was voted Buckinghamshire Company of the Year in 2008.
Plastics Recycling Leader
Based at the Wilton International industrial park near Redcar, Greenstar WES (www.thewesgroup.co.uk) processes thousands of tonnes of recycled plastics for reuse purposes, saving natural resources and cutting carbon impact.
In particular, the company led the world in developing the technology that helps convert plastic milk bottles into high quality, food-grade plastic chips used to help make new milk bottles, such as for M&S, supermarket food trays and cosmetics containers.
The winners of the National Recycling Awards 2009 will be announced at a gala awards event in London on 27th October.