A round-up of news from the waste and resources sector including a job-saving takeover of Gelpack, new capacity for Novamont and more community funding from Veolia.

Cutbacks planned by waste firm Viridor could lead to some 100 employees working in mechanical biological treatment facilities across Greater Manchester being served redundancy notices in a bid to cut costs.

The new Chair of LARAC has been revealed as Carole Taylor, who will be taking over the position in January 2018.

An agreement between members of the Unite union and Birmingham City Council will see over 100 refuse collection staff keep their jobs after five months of industrial action.

Perth, Leith and central Edinburgh have been selected as the locations for the latest round of Scotland’s Zero Waste Towns project and will share nearly £900,000 of funding to further Zero Waste principles in these areas.

Voting for this year’s Resource Hot 100 is now open. This is your chance to vote for the waste and resources industry’s biggest influencers.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has launched a call for evidence for a single-use plastics tax and committed an extra £30 million to the Environment Agency to tackle waste crime in his Autumn Budget Statement.

Plans to introduce four-weekly refuse collections across the borough of Conwy in North Wales have been put on hold as a council committee has voted down the proposals.

Nigel Lee, General Manager at Amur, says that anaerobic digestion plants need to work harder to improve gas yields if they are to achieve their budgeted income.

Bringing in contract staff, paying overtime and lost revenue from missed recycling collections have seen costs incurred by Birmingham City Council during this summer’s bin strike rise to £6.6 million.