The three borough councils in the re3 waste management partnership, Bracknell Forest, Reading, and Wokingham, and Waste Recycling Group (WRG) have officially opened the newest recycling and waste management facility in England.

The Smallmead Waste Management Park, located in Reading, Berkshire, is expected to handle over 200,000 tons of waste annually. It has taken 28 months to build the recycling facility, which is part of a £610-million, 25-year private finance initiative between the three councils and WRG.

The park boasts of a household recycling center that recycles the household waste of around 6,000 people a week, which opened in January 2008; a waste transfer station, where the non-recyclable waste is collected and disposed of, which opened in April 2008; a materials recycling facility that sorts and separates recycling materials, which opened in December 2008; and the recently finished visitor education center, where over 2,000 children and local community groups will learn more about recycling and waste management. A new school website will also be launched soon.

By 2012, the partnership expects to recycle more than half of its waste.

The partnership also redeveloped an old civic amenity site to open another re3 management park on July 13 at Longshot Lane in Bracknell, which consists of a household waste recycling center, a visitor education center, and a waste transfer station.

Councillor Paul Gittings, Lead Councillor for Environment and Sustainability at Reading Borough Council, said that through the recycling and waste management parks, the three partnership boroughs will be able to “meet government targets for recycling, avoid costly taxes of sending waste to landfill and reduce the effect that all the waste has on the environment.”

Waste Recycling Group is one of the leading waste management companies in the United Kingdom, recycling and disposing 13 million tons of household, commercial, and industrial waste.

- Natassia Y. Laforteza