Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority, in partnership with Viridor Laing (Greater Manchester) Ltd, commissioned a new website to educate and inform residents about waste prevention and recycling initiatives in their area. Since the Recycle for Greater Manchester website was re-launched its hit rate has multiplied by seven.
Pamela Taylor, Communications Manager for GMWDA said: “We handle 1.1 million tonnes of municipal waste each year and our goal is to recycle and compost at least 50% by 2015. We signed a 25 year Private Finance Initiative recycling and waste management contract with Viridor Laing (Greater Manchester) in April 2009, which triggered a £640 million construction programme to create a network of state of the art recycling facilities by 2012.
“As part of our waste management solution we wanted a website that, for the first time, would centralise all the recycling information from each of the councils in the Greater Manchester area. We wanted an inviting and easy to navigate site where residents could quickly find and download information on reducing, re-using and recycling. We gave Quiet Storm a wish list and left the site design to them. We are very happy with the result and impressed by the service we received. Since the site went live around 18 months ago the hits have increased seven fold and we have just added a new education section which will draw even more visitors.”
The website uses a simple menu structure and includes a search facility and an enquiry form. Each of the ten councils in the Greater Manchester area has an information page with a link to its own website. The ‘waste education’ section provides a useful resource for teachers and includes e-forms to arrange visits for classes and to request further information. The site includes an A-Z of household materials and how to recycle them and a section detailing Recycle for Greater Manchester’s innovative waste and recycling solution. This enables the 1 million households in the Greater Manchester area to find out how their waste is processed and treated and how well the Authority is doing in meeting its waste reduction and recycling targets.
GMWDA is England’s largest Waste Disposal Authority and provides a world class environmentally sustainable solution for Greater Manchester’s waste; it handles around 5% of National Municipal waste. Viridor Laing (Greater Manchester) Ltd is a consortium comprising Viridor Waste Management Ltd and John Laing plc, a leading investor, developer and operator of privately financed public sector infrastructure projects. The GMWDA and Viridor Laing (Greater Manchester) recycling and waste management project is the first of its kind, on such a large scale, in the Europe. The aim is to divert more than 75% of Greater Manchester’s waste away from landfill – the most ambitious target in the country, with the ultimate ambition of zero waste to landfill.