Waste and Recycling

The University is committed to the development of sustainable waste management practices and the principles of reduce, re-use and recycle throughout the organisation.

Our current waste contract is with Veolia ES (UK) Ltd and is run in conjuction with the University of Salford and the Royal Northern College of Music. The contract covers the collection of general (residual) waste plus some recyclates.

The contract ensures that as much waste as possible is diverted from landfill and that no waste at all is sent direct to landfill. Veolia achieve this by taking all non-recyclable (residual*) waste to their Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Trafford Park where it is shredded before it is transferred to a facility in FerryBridge in West Yorkshire run by Multifuel Energy Ltd where it is used as a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). For more details, see here.

A local company, Elsa Recycling, collect the majority of the University's waste office paper and cardboard on the main campus.

In addition, we collect and recycle numerous waste streams across the campus using our own staff - see our series of short videos which illustrate how we recycle various waste streams.

The larger recycling points across campus can be found here.

Our most recent waste statistics (2018/19) are**:

  • Total waste produced: 3,980 tonnes
  • Total waste recycled: 1,599.5 (40%)
  • Total reused: 158 (4%)
  • Total reused and recycled: 1,757.5 (44%)
  • Total % of all waste diverted from landfill: 94%

* this being the waste that is left after various recyclates have been collected at source.

** these figures do not include any construction waste

*** this includes green waste which is composted and food waste which is sent to anaerobic digestion