CASTLE Howard has teamed up with a waste management company to reduce the environmental impact of its 270,000 visitors each year.

From May, all of the material collected from Castle Howard will either be recycled or turned into green electricity through a new service from Yorwaste.

The partnership will focus on recycling, with dedicated containers placed across the 8,800-acre site to collect paper, plastic bottles, aluminium and steel tins and cardboard, with separate containers for glass.

This will be collected by Yorwaste weekly and taken to the company’s Harewood Whin facility for sorting and separation, and final recycling into their original states.

General waste and food waste bins will also be on site. The general waste will go to Allerton Waste Recovery Park, near York, which provides electricity which is fed back into the National Grid. Enough energy is created at Allerton Park to power 40,000 homes.

Matthew Nicholson, head of commercial operations at Castle Howard, said: “Whether it’s planting thousands of new trees or installing energy efficiency heating, we have always taken an eco-friendly approach to help reduce our environmental impact and ensure Castle Howard can continue to be enjoyed for generations to come. We welcome over 270,000 visitors to Castle Howard each year, so ensuring we reduce, reuse, recycle or recover the waste generated is an important part of this approach.”

Liz Thompson, of Yorwaste, said: “As a company based and operating in North Yorkshire and York, we’re committed to ensuring the area remains a beautiful place in which to live and work. We’re therefore looking forward to working in partnership with Castle Howard to provide a high-quality, recycling-focused service. As well as providing them with a landfill diversion solution, we are also able to guarantee to keep their carbon footprint to an absolute minimum through our unrivalled network of local waste processing facilities.”