Last month Tidy Thames Refuse Services attended the Thames Gateway Business Awards 2007 as a finalist for the Environmental Business of the Year. Since the company began in 1983 Chris Livett has picked up numerous awards for innovation and achievement, including winning the prestigious Queen Mother’s Birthday Awards twice.
The latest award was a result of the success of the ‘Recycling by Water’ initiative which not only reduces participating customer’s impact on the environment but also reduces their waste bills.
Chris commented “Following market research in 2005 a ‘Recycling by Water’ initiative was developed to offer customers an economically and environmentally positive solution to their waste disposal requirements. This has proved very effective and allowed us to reduce waste to landfill from our participating customers by approximately 50%.”
There have been many other positive environmental, social and economic benefits as a result of the Recycling by Water service to both the river Thames and
- Reduced lorry traffic on
- Reduced pollution by moving larger quantities of waste in each trip
- Reprocessing of materials previously sent to landfill
- Innovation as this is the first service of it’s kind in the
- Increased awareness of environmentally responsible business operation
- Reduced waste disposal bills
The next stage is to develop the service further increasing the amount of waste that is recycled and reducing the amount that goes to landfill. Chris commented, “We are actually able to reduce our customer’s annual bills, against the ever increasing costs of fuel, tax and inflation. With landfill tax continuing to rise at such a huge rate we simply cannot continue to simply throw refuse away. All our customers need to recycle, those that are not are throwing money away!”