The new contract, which began on 1 April 2026, covers kerbside collections, two household waste recycling centres, an energy recovery facility and a materials recovery facility. Thalia Waste Management's original 25-year contract with the council was awarded in 2015 at a value of £225 million, replacing an 18-year arrangement with Biffa. Natasha Dix, the council's service director for waste, environment and planning, said collection routines for residents would stay exactly the same during the handover to Veolia.

The CREDIT project, a 5.6 million euro initiative led by Spanish engineering company Idener, brings together 11 partners from the EU and Turkey to develop digital tools for circular remanufacturing across industries including white goods, automotive, telecommunications and aerospace. The platform uses a layered modular architecture with a semantic modelling service that allows industrial partners to create tailored data spaces, modelling machines, sensors, processes and materials in their own operational context.

Alvaro Fernandez, a member of the CREDIT project coordination team, said: “This fully operational version of the tool gives us the opportunity to learn from real data, real constraints and real users, and that feedback is essential to continue building a robust platform that can scale across Europe’s manufacturing ecosystem.”

The demonstrator, named Charlie, is installed at the Gazea farm in Pleo, Cotes-d'Armor, with an annual capacity of approximately 180 tonnes of bioLNG and 330 tonnes of liquid bioCO2. The patented process liquefies raw biogas on-site, increasing its energy density for off-grid transport to centralised hubs where cryogenic distillation separates it into biomethane and CO2. The company says the model is inspired by milk collection logistics, enabling smaller or remote farms excluded from gas grid injection to participate in renewable fuel production.

Bruno Adhemar, founder and CEO of SUBLIME Energie, said: “We demonstrate that it is possible to overcome the historical limitations of anaerobic digestion. By liquefying biogas directly on the farm, we enable an off-grid model capable of unlocking large-scale value from a fragmented agricultural resource.”

The Global Data Insights Platform allows businesses to centralise packaging, component and supplier data in one system, model pEPR compliance costs and assess recyclability ahead of modulated fees. Phillip Crum, director of data insights at Valpak, said enquiries had risen by more than 40 per cent in eight months following the arrival of the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation. Seven US states have also passed bills for packaging EPR.

Crum said: "Modern compliance is not just about submitting accurate data - the real benefits lie in putting the data to work, to reduce costs and drive change. Managing compliance across borders calls for a new level of visibility and instant analysis."