The first five machines have been placed in Hampshire stores but last week the company decided to expand its trials of the machines by placing one at its large out-of-town store in Royston, Hertfordshire.
 Cllr Bill Davidson of North Hertfordshire council and local children try out the new “intelligent” recycling bank at Tesco's in Royston |
Andrew Duckworth, Tesco's recycling manager, said: “We had been in talks with the council about the facilities in Royston and decided to embrace the town's enthusiasm for recycling by introducing one of our intelligent recycling units. We are confident that our customers will embrace this new concept and recycle more and more of their waste.”
Commitment
Cllr Bill Davidson, portfolio holder for waste management for North Hertfordshire which covers Royston, said: “We are glad that Tesco has been able to install this automated unit in Royston. It demonstrated a commitment to offer customers the wide-range of recycling facilities they have come to expect.”
The councillor opened the plant earlier this month with support from local schoolchildren. Part of the revenue gained from the machine will be handed back to the local Sunbeams playscheme for young children in Royston.
The recycling machine at Royston has two openings for the public to place plastics, glass and cans in while there is a separate opening for plastic bags and a cardboard and paper section.
– Andy Duckworth, Tesco
The machines in Hampshire and Royston, have a number of advantages according to Tesco. This includes the fact that they have a higher capacity than normal sites, are easier to monitor and there is a reduction in transport movements.
The 11m long recycling centre contains granulating machinery that reduces plastics and aluminium to one fifteenth of the original volume while glass is broken reducing volume by 3:1. The machine can hold 20,000 PET and HDPE bottles, 35,000 aluminium cans, 9,300 glass bottles and 1,000 steel cans.
Berryman
Hampshire sites are maintained by Severnside Recycling with some material being handled by glass recycling firm Berryman. Results from the machines are said to very positive although the level of returns can relate to the success of kerbside collections. Because of its location, the Royston site will be serviced by Berryman out of its Dagenham base. A particularly high level of plastics recycling is expected at Royston as it is not a material currently collected by the council.
The centres are part of a trial funded by the Waste and Resources Action Programme to assess the recycling potential of the retail forecourt. The machine is a joint venture between Tesco and Norwegian company Tomra Systems.
Technical
Terje Hanserud of Tomra said that the machines “are proving a technical success and are reliable. There is nothing identical in the world to them.”
He explained that he considered there was more opportunity for using the machines in the UK because out of Western European countries, “the UK is one that really has to improve to a large extent.”
The unit, said Mr Hanserud, has two core technological components – shredders and granulators alongside a simple spectrometer to sort plastics.
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