Paint recycling machine helps council cut waste
A new machine built by the Mears Group is helping a North Lanarkshire council in Scotland to recycle unwanted paint which would normally go to waste.
The Mears Group runs a £30 million repair and maintenance contract onbehalf of the council. By working with waste management service broker Network Waste, the company has introduced initiatives such as paint recycling and now says it has managed to increase the amount of waste it diverts from landfill to 98%.
Mears’ Supply Chain Manager Colin Erskine said: “We often have a large volume of paint left over from our maintenance work on council properties and from void property clearances.
“This new system of storing the paints allows us to separate and recycle the paint efficiently instead throwing away liquid and tins. In simple terms we have designed a funnel system which drains paint into an intermediate bulk container. This makes the waste liquid easier to handle and allows the dried out tins to be recycled as scrap metal.”
H&A Recycling intalls bio-thermic digester
Waste management firm H&A Recycling in Cornwall has contracted waste treatment plant provider Biozolve to supply and install an industrial scale Advetec Bio-Thermic Digester (BTD) to reduce organic content in trade and black bag waste.
H&A Recycling, which provides services to customer sites across Cornwall, currently processes 24,000 tonnes of trade and black bag waste each year at its materials recycling facility (MRF) site in Redruth. Until now, trommel fines from the recycling process, some 4,000 tonnes, have gone straight to landfill attracting surcharge premiums, with costs in the region of £120 per tonne.
The new Advetec machine, which can process 10 tonnes of material per day, will be used to digest and remove odour and organic content from trommel fines, with a resulting discharge of water and an inert powdery residue.
H&A Recycling’s managing director, Allan Holmes, said: “As Cornwall’s leading independent waste management and recycling company, zero landfill is the number one goal for H&A Recycling. The Advetec solution, as provided by BioZolve, is a significant step towards our 2014 targets. At the same time, it will give us far better control over any potential environmental issues at our site. The BTD will help us to control costs at a time when transport expenditure and landfill taxes for organic waste continue to rise.”
DS Smith’s Recycling Division rolls out DriveCam technology
DS Smith’s recycling division has launched video-based driver safety technology across its fleet following a successful trial period.
The DriveCam Programme from Lytx combines sophisticated predictive analytics with a coaching programme to improve driver performance and prevent collisions and reduce costs by an average of 50-80%, according to the company.
DS Smith’s Recycling Division will deploy the solution to 130 plus vehicles in its fleet after 23 vehicles took part in the trial. The company decided to take part in the trial after the DriveCam Programme proved to be successful in other areas of the business, notably leading to DS Smith driver Ian Peters being recognised as Lytx International Driver of the Year for 2013.
Adrian Ball, logistics manager at DS Smith’s recycling division, added: “After seeing a reduction in collision costs of 75% and, most importantly, a significant reduction in rollover events within other divisions of the business, implementing the DriveCam Programme was an easy decision to make.”
SWEEEP Kuusakoski chooses Tomra technology
Sensor-based sorting equipment supplied by Tomra Sorting has been chosen to upgrade and separate metallic fractions at the Kent plant of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycler Sweeep Kuusakoski.
Two Titech machines have been installed at the plant; a Titech finder to recover copper wires, alloys and stainless steel from shredder processes and a Titech combisense which uses a high resolution colour camera and metal sensor to sort copper and circuit board from aluminium.
Whereas the plant previously relied on hand sorting of the material – which was labour intensive– the installation of the new units has increased the plant’s processing capacity to 10 tonnes per hour.
Patrick Watts, managing director of Sweeep Kuusakoski, said: “The Titech units were installed earlier this year, instantly increasing our sorting capacity and significantly improving the quality of our sorted material. We can now sell our material at better prices in a larger sea of buyers, potentially to both home and foreign markets, which of course strengthens our business model.”
Bristol company buys refurbished recycling vehicles
Bristol-based window cleaning company, Aspects Solutions Ltd (ASL), has purchased a fleet of used vehicles from Refuse Vehicle Solutions (RVS) to help roll out a new waste management and recycling service.
RVS specialises in refurbishing used refuse vehicles, stripping them down and replacing or repairing defective parts to provide ‘as new’ vehicles that cost less than a new model.
The vehicles include two 24-tonne and one 26-tonne 2007 Dennis Elite 2, Phoenix 2 vehicles all with Terberg OmniDel binlifts. ASL will collect any commercial or retail trade waste as well as recycling materials such as wood, plastics, metal, cardboard and glass. ASL will collect any commercial or retail trade waste as well as recycling materials such as wood, plastics, metal, cardboard and glass.
Spencer Law, managing director of RVS said: “The vehicles look great, especially in ASL’s striking livery, which we did in our own paint shop. Our Quality Used vehicles are a viable, cost effective alternative to buying new trucks and they offer the same operational lifetime.”
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