The following Centres of Industrial Collaboration can unlock cutting edge technical expertise or the specialist resources this industry needs.

The Environmental Technologies CIC works in conjunction with businesses in reducing waste output and energy usage.

As a business owner or operator, keeping pace with the changes in environmental policies and regulations is a major challenge. This CIC can take on the burden of these issues for your business and has a track record of providing appropriate responses and anticipating future environmental implications.

There are now stiff financial incentives for businesses to send less waste to landfill, both by decreasing waste production and by increasing recycling rates. The CIC provides advice on current and foreseeable waste regulations relevant to your specific business. Working with ETCIC, waste and recycling issues can be addressed, providing your business with direct commercial benefits.

It is vitally important that organisms that may affect human health are detected. The ongoing work of the ETCIC involves the use and development of advanced techniques to detect their presence in a wide range of business situations

The centre has also developed technology to detects contaminants as early as possible. The 'Lab-on-a-Chip' is a system which promises point-of-source monitoring of liquid and gaseous streams on a cost-effective basis for business use.

ETCIC is a formidable source of knowledge, skills and capital intensive supporting equipment on a whole range of environmental technologies. The centre also offers access to a key resource in the Total Environment Simulator (TES), an experimental facility designed for modelling the dynamics of fluid and sediment transfer under a wide range of environmental conditions.

Our environmental technologies industries also benefit from the following available resources:

Recycling Action Yorkshire (RAY) is a new regional 3 year recycling and market development programme initiated by Yorkshire Forward in partnership with key regional and national stakeholders. RAY will be a 'recycling centre of excellence' to support and enhance the co-ordinated development of the 'secondary materials' supply chain: collection, reprocessing, manufacture and end products. RAY will make a significant contribution to the region's targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, ensure substantial increases in recycling tonnages, create new jobs and business opportunities and stimulate additional private sector investment.

The University of Leeds have a strategic research partnership with Yorkshire Water and are to be one of only four suppliers of research to them in the future. Areas of expertise at Leeds include catchment management, grid network organisation, demand assessment and forecasting and water quality.

In addition there is some expertise in the treatment of wastewaters and pathogen removal during sludge treatment in the Department of Civil Engineering.

The University of Sheffield's Biological and Environmental Systems Group within the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering have expertise in wastewater treatment using a biochemical engineering approach.

The University of Hull is currently working with Yorkshire Water on the Wormery System which could revolutionise clean-up of aqueous and organic animal waste streams. They are also working on extraction of energy from wastewater streams and undertake hydraulic modelling.

The Water and Environment Group based in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds has substantial expertise in composting.

The Immobilisation Science Laboratory at Sheffield is a BNFL sponsored university research alliance in association with the Department of Engineering Materials at the University of Sheffield. It conducts research on the problem of radioactive waste immobilisation and is currently expanding its research portfolio to cover the disposal of toxic waste.

Sheffield Hallam University has expertise in the development of materials from waste, principally at the Centre for Infrastructure Management, and has been engaged in research and development to develop the sustainable for the construction industry for many years.

Development of cleaner chemical processes or 'Green Chemistry' is also a strength in the region. Yorkshire Forward has funded a Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, which is based at the Clean Technology Centre at York University and links to Leeds and the Central Science Laboratory.

The region is also home to the largest glass recycler in the country that has recently invested in state of the art technology to improve glass separation. There is also a well establish base for metal recycling with well reprocessing facilities operated by major players in the field and a network of small operators.

The region offers a number of architects and designers, involved in both reed bed technology and water-based aerobic and anaerobic systems that make use of naturally occurring algae and bacteria. Local companies have developed award-winning designs and there is related expertise in the Civil Engineering Department at Leeds University.