Veolia Environmental Services Continues to Work with the Community on Getting Recycling Right

SYDNEY, May 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Veolia Environmental Services announced that in 2010 it recycled over 157,000 tonnes of materials from businesses and homes across Australia. The announcement comes just days before World Environment Day held on June 5th.

Veolia Environmental Services, as a leader in the provision of waste management and recycling, is working closely with businesses to educate them on the value of business recycling, both from an economic and environmental viewpoint.

World Environment Day however, provides a timely reminder that more work needs to be done, and more educational support needs to be made available to ensure the long-term impacts of waste are minimised.

"Veolia is proud to have helped reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill within Australia and continues to look at innovative approaches and technologies that will continue to see recycling rates increase, whilst also looking at alternative waste treatment solutions," Doug Dean, MD Veolia Environmental Services, Australia and New Zealand.

Veolia offers a vast range of waste and recycling services; recovering materials including paper, cardboard, metals and commingled glass and plastics. Veolia also processes and recovers potentially hazardous materials including electronic waste, batteries and liquid waste.

When working with Australian residents and businesses Veolia believes that recycling education and training has never been more important and together with the broad services offered, Veolia is working with the community on getting recycling right.

Veolia recently launched the "Getting Wise about Waste" educational program which incorporates a vast collection of materials to help people understand how to identify various waste streams and subsequently utilise the correct disposal method. Contamination of both general waste streams and recyclable materials is a very real hazard, contributing to not only environmental and safety risks, but resulting in a lot of recyclable materials being sent to landfill rather than recovered and re-used.

As part of the "Getting Wise about Waste" program informative signage, new RecyclePak bin labeling, educational brochures and flyers were all developed, to further aid the general community on how to recycle correctly. In July 2010, Veolia also launched a fully interactive learning web-portal about waste and recycling for commercial customers.

Doug Dean commented further, "On World Environment Day, Veolia is encouraging businesses, local councils and the general public, not only commit to sorting their waste and recyclables, but more so invest some time into understanding the importance of reducing contamination when segregating waste to ensure that their efforts are not unnoticed and make a very real impact on reducing waste to landfill rates, whilst also reducing reliance on virgin materials."

About Veolia: Veolia Environmental Services is Australia's environmental services leader in all facets of waste disposal, e-waste recycling and resource recovery, as well as industrial services such as Industrial Cleaning and Facilities Management. Veolia has over 30 years industry experience in implementing effective, innovative and sustainable Waste Management and Industrial Services solutions.

SOURCE Veolia Environmental Services, Australia and New Zealand