(From left) Glenn Currie, Mike Penning MP and Andy Cattigan in Waste King’s offices, in front of some of Waste King’s Awards and Certificates.

Mike Penning, the Member of Parliament for Hemel Hempstead and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, has visited the specialist collections, clearance and recycling company, Waste King. While there, he found out about Waste King’s many environmentally-friendly waste and recycling initiatives and congratulated the company and its staff on their award-winning environmentally friendly policies and business strategy.

Among these is a recycling point for clothes and shoes, which has proved so popular that it’s been filled – and emptied – over 50 times in the last year. This has helped to raise funds for Waste King’s chosen charities of the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and the Salvation Army. Waste King has also installed a ‘bank’ for unwanted used books, DVDs and so on. The proceeds from this recycling activity have also gone to the BHF.

During his conducted tour of Waste King’s premises, on the Frogmore Industrial Estate near Two Waters, Hemel Hempstead, Mr Penning commented: “It’s great to see Waste King playing its part to protect the environment for future generations, make our local economy more environmentally sustainable and improve the quality of life and well-being. I’ve been impressed by the commitment and dedication of the staff – led by the company’s directors, Glenn Currie and Andy Cattigan – to do as much as possible to protect and enhance our environment through waste collection and recycling.”

Last June, Waste King won a ‘Green Apple Award’ in a national campaign to find Britain’s greenest companies. The company was also awarded the ‘Silver Star’ by the National Recycling Stars Scheme – in recognition of the company’s commitment to increasing the amount of waste the company recycles and to improving the environmental awareness of its staff. Waste King was judged on its recycling achievements according to a range of criteria which are designed to assess not only an organisation’s percentage of waste recycled but also the overall commitment and engagement of its staff in implementing environmental initiatives.

Comment: ‘Brownie points’ all round on this. For one thing, Mike Penning took the initiative and asked to visit Waste King – to see the company’s unusual and environmentally-friendly approach to waste clearance and recycling for himself. For another, Waste King is unusual in committing to recycle some 85 per cent or more of all the waste it collects – from domestic or industrial premises. This commitment is both time consuming and quite labour-intensive, so it ‘bucks the trend’ in these days of trying to reduce the number of jobs (and resulting labour costs).

As an occasional customer of Waste King, I can testify to the benefits of their personalised waste clearance and recycling service. As a non-constituent of Mike Penning, I can pay an objective tribute to his interest in the businesses – and their likely job-creation activities – in his constituency.