Shanks is currently commissioning the plant which uses technology described as “revolutionary” and
“the first of its kind in the UK”. The Waste and Resources Action Programme is taking a keen interest in the project and is itself looking at ways to increase the expansion of bottle sorting capacity in the UK.
The new auto sorter will increase the amount of material that Shanks can process at the Milton Keynes materials recycling facility (MRF) from 11 to 40 tonnes a day. The automatic sorting machine makes plastic recycling much more cost effective as throughput is increased and Shanks can accept baled mixed plastics, which the old plant could not process.
The plastic is sorted into clear PET, coloured PET, natural HDPE and coloured HDPE by being passed under light beams and the machine also sorts steel and aluminium with a series of magnets and eddy currents.
Previously sorting of bottles for the machine at Milton Keynes was carried out manually at the MRF and although workers will still be employed they will only sort PVC (which the machine cannot detect) and work on the pre-sort and post-sort lines extracting items which are too difficult for the machine to process.
While the new sorting equipment is set to reduce costs at this stage of the recycling process, some industry experts say that attention still needs to be paid by WRAP and others to ways in which to reduce the costs of collection of plastic bottles.
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