A BURY business is celebrating after preventing more than 30 tonnes of plastic from ending up in landfill.

Two years ago, wholesalers WDS Group, who are based on Peel Mills Industrial Estate, teamed up with Dutch business OneCircle to create a programme which recycles the basic materials from plastic beverage kegs by turning them into new, useable 'KeyKegs'.

Most plastic beverage kegs in the UK are not recycled and often end up in landfill but a KeyKeg consists of 81 per cent PP and PET, two types of plastics that can be reused as a circular raw material. The rest of the materials can be used in other high-quality applications.

WDS Group will collect the used KeyKegs from bars and deliver them to plastic recycling specialist OneCircle, where the KeyKegs are then processed and turned back into new KeyKegs.

More than 90 per cent of the plastic kegs used in the UK are KeyKegs, so once rolled out, the initiative will dramatically reduce the number of plastic kegs being thrown into general waste and potentially ending up in landfill.

Sam Evans, sales director, WDS Group, said: "We estimate that more than 500,000 KeyKegs end up in Manchester alone every year and it is great that we can now use them as raw materials again.

"It meets a huge need. Many bars and breweries have heard that we are going to process KeyKegs and have spontaneously saved them up. It is clear to them that a lot of plastic ends up in landfill and they want to prevent that from happening. The time has come to work together with packaging producers on closed loops, and OneCircle is leading the way."

Founded in 2009, WDS Group is a family run business of 20 people offering a range of over 2,500 products to a variety of bars, cafés and restaurants cross the North West.