Award Winning Innovation

Marco Shaw, Lesley O'connor and Liam Pilkington of Avanti with Deputy Chair of Envirolink, Richard Pearce

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The Northwest Business Environment Awards are the region’s premier awards event in celebration of good business and environmental practice. The awards this year were held in June at Old Trafford Football Ground and recognise companies that are achieving outstanding success while improving and protecting the environment.

Avanti Blue Ltd, a specialist polythene film and sack manufacturer of Sefton Street in Heywood, gained 2nd place in the Environmental Technologies SME category at the prestigious event after recognising the environmental challenges that some plastics present. The company were keen to tackle this problem and developed a unique fully compostable, totally biodegradable plastic sack that can be made to different specifications for use in undersink, kitchen and wheelie-bins.

Anita Shaw of Avanti said “We are delighted to have launched our range of compostable sacks onto the market and be doing something beneficial for the environment. To be recognised at an awards ceremony for this is a bonus and an achievement of which we are very proud”.

Groundwork was involved in the early stages of the compostable sack development and helped locate suitable companies to pilot test the products for effectiveness. Following feedback from the trials, Avanti were able to make adjustments to the sacks that have contributed to the end product on the market today.

Avanti Blue has been a member of Groundwork’s Business Environment Association for over 5 years and in that time have addressed and tackled a variety of issues including packaging, waste and energy. The company benefited from a waste audit in 2002 where cost savings of up to £30,000 were identified. This was followed up last year with a FastTrack visit to identify further waste minimisation initiatives and ways to reduce resources through improved packaging design.

If your company is interested in minimising waste and saving money, please contact Darren Hill on 0161 624 1444 or by email to dhill@groundwork.org.uk.