VERDANT EXTENDS CONTRACT WITH ITS FIRST COUNCIL CUSTOMER

Sevenoaks, Kent, May 2009 – Municipal services specialist Verdant Group Plc has secured a seven year extension to its contract with Melton Borough Council, consistently a top English recycling authority which is now achieving a recycling rate of well over 50%.

According to the council, the contract extension will help ensure that current service and performance levels are maintained. It includes a commitment to partnership working that will see the services evolve over the extended contract period.

Verdant will also provide a more comprehensive street cleansing service. The council estimates the contract extension has saved around £100,000 in tender administration costs.

Verdant’s records show that Melton achieved a recycling rate of nearly 50% in 2007/08. This has improved further to around 52% for the year 2008/09.

Paul Evans, Head of Street Scene & Environment for Melton Borough Council, said: “Verdant’s service delivery and focus has helped everyone in Melton to waste less and recycle more, helping us become one of the top recycling councils in England. That record, plus improvements in other services such as cleansing, made it easy for the council to consider and approve the contract extension.”

Verdant managing director Roger Edwards said that securing Melton’s contract extension was ‘particularly pleasing as the two organisations go back a long way’, he added: “I know that the Verdant team has delivered time and again for Melton, but we couldn’t have done it without the productive and positive partnership with Melton Borough Council.” Both the council and Verdant paid tribute to Melton’s residents for their ‘wholehearted support’ of recycling.

First customer for Verdant

Melton was Verdant’s first new local authority customer when the company launched itself in 2002, securing a seven year recycling, refuse and street cleansing contract that began in April 2003.

Within a year, Verdant had successfully trialled a new collection service based on twin wheeled bins, one for waste and the other for green waste, which were collected on alternate weeks, and boxes for dry recyclables collected weekly.

The scheme was rolled out in 2005 across the mix of around 21,000 urban and rural properties in Melton’s area, soon achieving telling uplifts in recycling performance that regularly put the East Midlands borough amongst the top recycling authorities in England.

In 1998/99, Melton households were producing around 0.65 tonnes of landfilled waste annually. In 2008/09, this was down to about half a tonne per household, thanks to increases in both dry recyclable and green waste collections

Between 1999 and 2002, Melton’s best monthly collection of garden waste for composting was around 200 tonnes (July and October), compared to a best of around 930 tonnes in May 2008, an increase of nearly 400 per cent.

- ends -

About Verdant

Verdant Group Plc (www.verdant-group.co.uk), part of the fast-growing, recycling-led Greenstar UK group (www.greenstar.co.uk), provides high quality, efficient recycling, refuse, cleansing and grounds maintenance services for 24 local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland. It makes over 55 million recycling and refuse collections annually from nearly 1.1 million households, and employs over 1,600 staff operating with 600+ vehicles. Hundreds of staff are participating in a government-backed skills and awareness training programme which leads to a recognised vocational qualification. Verdant’s Arun Green Waste Club in West Sussex won Best Partnership Project at the 2007 National Recycling Awards, and Verdant also won the Best Commitment to Health & Safety category of the 2005 National Recycling Awards.

For further media information, contact:

Blair Drummond, Verdant PR consultant – tel (m) 07798 686 217, email blair.drummond@btopenworld.com