Stephens Smart Waste

Stephens Smart Waste is a family-owned supplier of integrated sustainable waste management and environmental solutions. Operating across the North of England, we work in partnership with clients to help reduce the financial and environmental impacts of their waste management.

We have developed a distinctive approach that has helped us to establish our position within a very demanding industry. This approach is backed up by our commitment to quality of service, innovation and technical development, together with a genuine and open concern for the environment.

What We Do

We provide a waste management service to ultimately eliminate, reduce, reuse, recycle and recover energy. The disposal of waste will undergo a combination of specialist recycling services, with the use of waste processing facilities.

Stephens Smart Waste services not only include the collection of your business waste, but also includes the treatment, recovery, recycling and disposal of non-hazardous waste streams.

We also offer additional services including special event waste management. At Stephens Smart Waste we cater for events of any size, from small local events, to large sporting events or festivals. Whether you are an event organiser, production company or part of an event cleaning company, here at Stephens Smart Waste, we will work with you to identify the most suitable waste collection service.

How Stephens Smart Waste Operates

Here at Stephens Smart Waste, we are committed to operating our business both sustainably and responsibly. We run and operate our extensive fleet of varied purpose-built collection vehicles and our operations and services are all focused towards maximising recycling and the energy recovery. We at Stephen’s Smart Waste Solutions are constantly looking at different facilities to accommodate the needs of our continuous sustainable loop. Through our approach and education, our ethos and work ethics, all we ask for is transparency, as this is a key ingredient for us to demonstrate our cost saving exercises.

Stephens Smart Waste History

I’m Stephen Blakeley, the managing director of Stephens SmartWaste Limited. With over 30 years of experience in the waste business, recycling has been a massive part of my life.

My first job was for a painting and shot blasting company in Platt Bridge, Wigan. Having left school on Friday 23rd of May, I started working full time on Monday 26th of May. I progressed, learning my trade and working many hours of overtime for over 18 months. Unfortunately, the company was taken over, which was a massive turning point in my life at only 18 years of age. As a result, I decided to become self-employed and created a very successful mobile shot blasting and painting company. We progressed to own our own business premises at a 2-acre site in Abram. We had the opportunity to work with Blue Chip companies such as Kwik Save, Motor Panels and British Aerospace (now BAE systems). We also worked with many independent businesses, one in particular being Robert Bailey and Company, who had a very influential role on the next chapter of my working profession. At the time we completed a job on their Leyland Boxer Skip Truck vehicle, however after waiting over 6 months, no payments had yet been received. A compromise was made, which resulted in myself taking ownership of the skip truck. This was the start of my journey within the waste business…

During this time, my father, Dennis Blakeley was a director at a local skip hire company called PTS Skip Hire Limited, and within 2 years I had managed to buy the company. Not before long, PTS Skip Hire Limited was rebranded to become Blakeley’s Waste Management Limited.

It all started with the one Leyland Boxer Skip Truck; though not before long we started to have more and more Blakeley’s trucks on the road. During this time, landfill was very difficult, and any operator without a transfer station wouldn’t have survived. Subsequently, we put in a planning application into Wigan Council-which they refused. We appealed and lost the planning permission for a transfer station, instead they granted us planning permission for skip hire or transport use only. This then posed another challenge, do we cease the trading of the skip hire company and lay the staff off or do we try to find an alternative site with planning? The Blakeley name is renowned for hard work and sheer determination- so we refused to give up. The decision to find an alternative site was made. However, having to find a suitable site within 6 months was a challenge in itself. On the 17th December 1991 Blakeley’s Waste Management Limited got the permission it needed for a waste transfer station at Junction Works, Bickershaw Lane, Abram. The company began operating on the 4th January 1992.

Having founded and established Blakeley’s, myself and my father Dennis directed the company up until the 18th of October 2012, to become one of the largest independent waste management companies in the North West of England. We was respected nationally for innovation, professionalism, and regarded as the vanguard of waste management within North West.

More recently a new challenge was created. Stephens SmartWaste Limited was founded on the 4th of January 2016, endeavoring to provide the same philosophies that have been so successful over the previous years. Progression and innovation are the core values of our strategy, providing a collection service that is suited to each individual business needs.