Like it or not we in Britain are just not as good at recycling as our European neighbours. In the UK each person produces 565kg of waste every year – 55 per cent of which ends up in landfill, according to European Union statistics. Compare that with Germany where only one per cent of the average person’s municipal waste ends up in a hole in the ground.

That’s all changing though and a local company is at the forefront of the technology that’s keeping our rubbish out of our precious land. The Forge Recycling Plant, Kidderminster is now the biggest recycling centre in the UK and probably Europe. Here, almost any product from discarded envelopes to washing up bottles and old concrete and bricks can be turned into a reusable product.

The company was founded in 1984 by Ron and Hazel Lawrence, and is now run by their son David.

“My mother and father started the business 25 years ago with 10 skips and one lorry,” he says. Over the years the business expanded but the introduction of the landfill tax ten years ago forced them to rethink the strategy of the business. Realising that recycling was the future they put all their efforts into developing one of the most high-tech recycling businesses in the country.

In 2009 the company moved to its new 16 acre site. It’s here that recyclable materials such as cardboard, plastics, bricks and concrete are sorted and recovered. For example soils from the construction and demolition industry are refined and chemically analysed before going back out on the market. Recycled wood also has a variety of uses and can either be broken down into biomass fuel or sold to board manufacturers for chipboard.

Inside the works a 30 foot trommel (a specially designed cylinder) sorts the material into different sizes. From there, it hits a conveyer belt where it is manually sorted and a magnet removes metals. Products like plastics are baled to be sent off to places like China to be used again or they are ground down into another usable product and sold direct to the manufacturer.

“Ironically now we are wondering whether it is big enough,” David laughs.

But he is only half joking as David is a man who always has his eye on the future and is not content resting on his laurels enjoying what he has achieved but instead constantly seeks out new ideas. “We are quite inquisitive people, we want to go out and look at what other people are doing, that might be in this country or it could be abroad.”

For example, technological developments could one day see the conversion of plastics into a type of fuel oil. “I like looking for the next thing,” he says, “I get bored easily.” But for now his aims include ensuring that by the end of 2011, 98 per cent of what comes in on skips is recycled.

To achieve this aim business customers are encouraged to recycle in the workplace. “We are re-educating our customers into separating their waste at work into mixed recycling and general waste. At the moment most waste from businesses goes straight to landfill and even if it comes to the Forge it is often so contaminated it cannot be recycled. By collecting mixed recycling and general waste separately it keeps it simple for the customer but also ensures contamination of recyclables is kept to a minimum,” says David.

Currently the Forge Recycling plant processes 225,000 tonnes of rubbish a year but has the potential to process one million tonnes – keeping most of that out of landfill.

This is the scale that all recycling centres will have to operate on, believes David, if we have any hope in dealing with the 400 million tonnes of rubbished produced nationally every year.

In Worcestershire residential waste weighs in at a hefty 267,000 tonnes per annum and costs the council £23 million to collect and dispose of.

Increases in landfill taxes will place more responsibility on waste producers says Worcestershire’s County Council's Waste Services Manager Richard Woodward. “There are about to be some consultations on landfill bans for certain materials. With recent legislation like the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment and Battery Directives) there is more emphasis being placed on producer responsibility.”

David agrees: “It has a whole duty of care which puts responsibility onto the waste producer.” He also believes legislation will go further. “They (the government) are looking at banning food waste, plastic, paper and cardboard from landfill.”

This compiled with higher landfill taxes mean that businesses will have to begin to take recycling more seriously as it will not be economical to take products to landfill. Current landfill taxes are around £48 per tonne and this is expected to almost double in four years with the last budget predicting it will be £80 per tonne by 2014.

New technology is also making recycling options a common sense option. David reveals plans to offer a service to utility companies where they will recycle the waste they dig up from the road into a product that can be used in the new road surface. At the moment, in Worcestershire, these companies pay to take the waste to landfill then go to a quarry to buy the virgin product, a non-renewable source, all the time increasing their carbon footprint and running inefficiently.

“This way we reinstate the road with the recycled materials and they can bring a vehicle in here, tip and pick up all at the same time,” says David.

“It is so simple to do that,” he adds and it does invite the question ‘why has it taken this long to do all this?’ to which he shakes his head.