NI Businesses Urged To 'Maximise The Value Of Their Waste'

Businesses in Northern Ireland are being encouraged to recycle more and to 'maximise the value of their waste' by Environment Minister Edwin Poots.

Mr Poots made the during a visit to McKinstry Skip Hire Limited in Crumlin. The Minister met with senior managers of the company to see at first hand their investment and development work with regards to recycling.

McKinstry specialises in waste management, recycling of household, business and commercial waste, skip hire, bio-waste and metals recycling.

The company continually investigates all global recycling markets to identify alternative outlets for their customer's waste products, such as paper and cardboard, metals, plastics and biomass.

Renewable energy is a crucial facet of the business and in recent years the company has invested heavily in new ways to recycle. A decade ago, McKinstry were taking 90% of all the waste collected to landfill, currently over 90% of waste is now being recycled and reused and the company's ambition is to move towards being a true 'zero waste' business.

Welcoming this, Minister Poots said: "Recycling benefits our environment, our businesses and our local economy and I congratulate McKinstry on their investment and efforts to become a 'zero-waste' company.

"Minimising waste and maximising the value of that waste boosts our local economy and I'd like to see more and more businesses in Northern Ireland being innovative and proactive to grasp the momentum behind recycling.

"I recently consulted on what the future of recycling might look like in Northern Ireland and I thank everyone who contributed. I will be publishing a summary of responses in due course and considering how to further increase the good work that has been done on recycling here."