A High Wycombe-based UK waste company, founded in 1912, that collects, recycles and recovers waste for homes, councils and businesses and runs large plastics recycling plants.
Biffa is one of the UK's best-known waste management companies. It collects household and business waste, sorts and recycles it, and recovers energy from what cannot be recycled. A description of the company on its Glassdoor page says it handles kerbside, light commercial and hazardous waste, runs landfill and waste-to-energy sites, and serves around 75,000 industrial, commercial and municipal customers and about a million households (an undated figure). Wikipedia, in a 2017 snapshot, said it covers 95% of the UK. Its plastics arm, Biffa Polymers, turns used plastic back into raw material for new packaging.
The company began in 1912, when Richard Henry Biffa started removing and selling ashes and clinker from London power stations from a base in Wembley. Today Biffa says its purpose is to change how people think about waste, help the UK tackle climate change and move towards a circular economy. It describes its values as being resourceful and responsible, and says it wants to lead by example and support the communities where it works. Its stated vision is "to lead the way in UK sustainable waste management".
In the UK, Biffa's registered office is in Cressex, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and it works from depots and plants across the country. Biffa Polymers has three named sites: Redcar, which handles HDPE and polypropylene plastics and, the company says, was the first in the world to make food-grade recycled HDPE pellets from post-consumer plastic; Seaham in County Durham, a bottle recycling plant that can process around 1.3 billion drinks bottles; and Sherburn, which turns PET flake into food-grade pellets and was added in 2023. Wikipedia reported about 8,200 employees in 2021. Biffa has been owned by the investment firm Energy Capital Partners since January 2023 and continues to trade as Biffa.
On people and community, Biffa runs several programmes it describes in its own words: Biffa Award and Biffa Bees support nature and biodiversity, Community Shop is a social enterprise selling surplus food at low prices, WasteAid helps communities in developing countries improve waste management, and Wasteaters teaches children about recycling. It also says its reskilling work includes training and work placements for people who have been out of work for a long time, and that it has cut its carbon emissions by 70% since 2002 and has a path to net zero by 2050. These are company claims.
A business like this employs far more than drivers and sorters. There are collection crews and fleet engineers, plant operators and chemists at the plastics sites, health and safety specialists, sustainability and data teams, sales and customer service staff, and finance and legal teams. If you like practical problem solving, vehicles, science or the idea of turning rubbish into something useful, there is a place for that interest here. Biffa Polymers is led by Managing Director James McLeary, and Michael Topham is named as chief executive on Wikipedia.
Website: www.biffa.co.uk
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