CIWM and WasteAid UK have called for the UK Government to increase aid for waste management in developing countries in order to prevent more plastic waste entering the oceans.

Packaging company DS Smith believes it can recycle all the UK’s coffee cup waste, which amounts to 2.5 billion cups, at its paper mill in Kent.

Shops and businesses across London have signed up to take part in a trial scheme that offers free tap water ‘refills’ to members of the public as part of the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s efforts to tackle single-use plastic waste.

Wales could be set to target an 80 per cent municipal waste recycling rate by 2035, according to Welsh Minister for Environment Hannah Blythyn at the CIWM Resource Conference Cymru yesterday (14 March).

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement of a consultation on how the tax system can be used to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics has received widespread acclaim from the waste and resources industry following the Spring Statement yesterday (13 March).

The River Tame, which flows through the Greater Manchester area was found by geographers at the University of Manchester to have a microplastics concentration of 517,000 particles per square metre.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is set to announce a public consultation on a plastics tax, along with a £20-million innovation fund to develop alternatives to the problem material.

Swindon-based Recycling Technologies Ltd, which turns waste plastic into a crude oil equivalent, has appointed two new non-executive directors to its leadership board.

Waste and recycled material is given a new life as art in a show at GroundWork Gallery in King’s Lynn, the UK’s only gallery to specialise in art and the environment.

The government has offered “warm words” but “no real action” today (9 March) in response to the report by the Environmental Audit Committee on disposable coffee cup waste, according to the committee’s Chair Mary Creagh.