The recycling industry gathered together to recognise key players in an impressive line up of winners at packaging compliance scheme Valpak's recent awards ceremony. The awards were presented by former BBC political correspondent John Sergeant, who praised the entrants for their efforts in pushing recycling of packaging forward in the UK.

The Best Investment of PRN Funds award, sponsored by Coca Cola Enterprises, was presented to Sonae UK Ltd who used PRN investment to enhance the quality of the products they manufacture by installing new sorting and cleaning technology. They have also reduced emissions by installing new stack clean up and dispersion equipment.

In the 'recycle-more' Best Innovative Initiative from a Local Authority award, sponsored by Sainsbury's, the judges were looking for an organisation that made a concerted effort to set up new collection systems and improve recycling performance. This was awarded to Stockport Council for creating a project to minimise the amount of waste generated within their offices through maximising the recycling and re-use of waste.

The Best Local Authority Project award, sponsored by Corus, recognised the Local Authority that had sourced the highest volume of packaging materials (based on kilograms per household) as part of its overall programme of recycling, in particular plastic bottles, aluminium and steel cans and glass.

Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council won this award for radically changing its domestic waste collection by introducing a fortnightly kerbside collection of refuse and recyclables. This enabled them to successfully build on their 2005 pilot recycling collection service to report recycling rates in excess of 36%, far exceeding its aim to meet statutory recycling targets of 24% of household waste by 2005/2006.

The fourth and final award, the Best Educational Project award, was sponsored by BPI. The criteria for this was for an individual, company or organisation to demonstrate a consistent and beneficial commitment to educating and promoting the importance of recycling, whether at a school, work or in the local community. Islington Council was recognised for developing its "i-recycle" centre, an interactive learning centre, which is the first of its kind in the country that aims to change the way that people think about rubbish and recycling. The judges were impressed with the centre's innovative and creative cutting edge technologies used to communicate messages.

Valpak Chief Executive, Steve Gough, said:" All the finalists and all the other companies and organisations that entered the Valpak Awards have done something worthy of recognition, in an industry where the pressure to deliver innovative recycling solutions continues to increase."

"We are grateful to our sponsors for supporting us in the quest to encourage more organisations to devise new ways of increasing recycling rates and we thank everyone who entered their scheme or initiative for an award this year."