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a lot of investment is planned for Merseyside in the next few years: it’s European Capital of Culture in 2008, includes New Deal for Communities funding areas and is in a market renewal pathfinder. There will be lots of building – and enormous amounts of construction waste.

It costs £30 to £33 to send a tonne of waste to landfill and this is increasing because the landfill tax is going up. We do a lot of development in the area and disposing of waste is expensive. So one of our contractors, Seddon Group, suggested setting up a construction waste recycling site.

We are setting up a company in partnership: Seddon will hold just over half the shares and we and Plus Group will split the rest.

It’s a low-technology approach to recycling. Skips of waste are taken to a shed and Seddon will employ five to 10 people to sort it into plastic, glass, timber, metal, soil and bricks. There are companies that will then take the sorted materials off you for free, for a small fee or even pay for them. About 80% to 90% of the material can be recycled.

At first our site will mainly take waste from us and Plus Group, avoiding landfill charges because it will be recycled. This will make savings and, in time, profit. At some point, the company will accept waste from other developers – and charge them.

Capital costs will be about £1m to £1.5m and we expect to be in the black by year three. It’s a reasonable level of investment but we’re expecting a commercial rate of return.