EVESHAM Garden Centre's warehouse manager Anita Bailey is the type of woman who can't bear waste. Recycle and re-use are her mantras at work, as well as at home.

So when it came to dealing with thousands of cardboard boxes at work, Anita was delighted when she found out her bosses were considering how best to deal with the mountains of packaging boxes they processed in an environmentally-conscious way. Together, they decided to introduce a Mil-tek waste baler to process both waste cardboard and plastic.

"We used to have three skips that were emptied twice a week, making six skip loads in all," said Anita.

"By using the Mil-tek baler we have reduced that to just one skip load of non recyclable rubbish. Eighty percent of packaging material is now recycled through the baler," she added.

Anita and the garden centre warehouse team separate card from plastic and the material is neatly compressed into dense bales which are then collected and recycled. The baler is easy and safe to use and is powered by an energy friendly air compressor. According to Karen Boers, marketing manager at Evesham Garden Centre, part of the Blue Diamond Group, there are other benefits too.

She said: "The yard is much tidier now that the card and plastic is baled and collected on a regular basis. We get through vast quantities of cardboard and plastic packaging because most of our products arrived wrapped in it, from patio table sets to photo frames to water butts. We get through such an amount that we are now being paid for the cardboard we recycle, which is an added bonus.

"We're delighted with the difference the baler makes."We all feel a lot better knowing we're processing our waste packaging properly. I love my recycling!"