The recipients of the Resource Association’s annual Quality Recognition Awards were announced during the association’s summer lecture, held at the National Liberal Club in London on 16 July.

The awards celebrate high quality recycling delivered to reprocessors, highlighting innovation and achievement in the recycling supply chain.

The Annual Lecture was delivered by campaigner Natalie Fee, founder of City to Sea, an organisation that campaigns to reduce marine plastic pollution at its source and whose Refill campaign catalogues the location of over 10,000 water refill points nationwide in its app. In her lecture, Fee highlighted the negative environmental impact caused by everyday household plastic items and discussed the opportunities to take positive action.

The awards are nominated by the Resource Association’s reprocessor members. To qualify, these companies have to meet a relevant industry quality standard and have no recycled material supplied rejected by the reprocessor throughout the previous financial year.

The 2018 winners

Below are the 2018 award recipients in alphabetical order.

• Hertfordshire Waste Partnership – nominated by Palm Recycling: a local authority partnership supplying high-quality source segregated newspapers and magazines to Palm.
• HW Martin Waste Ltd – nominated by Novelis Recycling: a recycling company and MRF operator supplying aluminium that has developed systems to ensure 100% reprocessing in a UK closed-loop system.
• J&B Recycling Ltd – nominated by ACE-UK, the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment: A company which has successfully secured local authority contracts increasing access to food and drink cartons for recycling, with a focus on MRF performance to meet quality standards.
• Newsprinters Ltd – nominated by UPM-Kymmene (UK): A printing company that has been working for years to ensure closed loop recycling is achieved by recovering newsprint and magazines collected from the contract printing carried out on onsite.
• Next plc – nominated by DS Smith Recycling: A major national retailer that supplied DS Smith with over 15,000 tonnes of clean used cardboard last year, demonstrating its commitment to quality by implementing a bale tagging system that ensures every bale of cardboard produced is labelled so that it can be traced back to when it was produced and who produced it.

The Resource Association’s Chief Executive Ray Georgeson commented: “The quality of recycling is an issue dear to our hearts and we wanted to tell a good story and highlight the art of the possible. I’m delighted that we have winners from the public and private sectors which just reminds us that high quality recycling is achievable, wherever you are in the supply chain.”

Robbie Warden, Chair of the Resource Association added: “The Resource Association quality recognition awards are a fitting way to celebrate the great work going on in our industry and help to highlight the pivotal role that our members the recyclers and reprocessors play in advancing the resources economy. It was fantastic to see such a wide range of winners from all sides of the industry. I’d like to congratulate all the winners this year on their great achievement.”