The scheme sees the Lincolnshire-based company taking old wheeled bins from local authorities and recycling them into new plastic material that can then be sold back to bin manufacturers to make new wheeled bins.
Luxus have been trialling the scheme with eight councils, mostly in the north of England, including Fylde and Wakefield. The company asks local authorities to cover the cost of transporting the bins to them, and then pay the authorities for the scrap plastic, around 100 a tonne, which translates to about 1 a bin.
Once at Luxus' Louth site, the plastic is put through a granulation process to create a base feedstock. The physical properties of the material are checked prior to being re-formulated with other recycled plastic feedstocks. The majority of the material produced from the bins is then sold back to bin manufacturers, although Luxus do sell some of their product to other companies.
Bin 2 Bin co-ordinator Jane Kettle said: “We would like to get the plastic back into the wheeled bin chain, but as we are a seller as well as a purchaser sometimes it goes elsewhere. We believe about 90% of the material we produce is sold back to wheeled bin manufacturers.
“Some material does go towards kerbside collection boxes and street litter bin covers, we are going to be offering Bin 2 Bin with these as well.”
As well as encouraging recycling, the Bin 2 Bin project has also been encouraging local authorities to work together, Ms Kettle said: “If a local authority doesn't have enough to properly fill a lorry, often they will contact authorities near by and collect bins from them as well.”
The scheme was started when bin manufacturer MGB was approached by an authority offering them end of life bins. MGB couldn't process the bins, so the company brought in Luxus to recycle the material back into plastic that could be made into new wheeled bins.
Luxus now collect bins themselves from councils and still supply MGB with recycled plastic but they are aiming to expand their sales to other bin manufacturers in the UK and abroad. MGB claim to use 95% recycled plastic in the manufacture of their wheeled bins, which they have recently supplied to Harrow council.
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