SMART DESIGNS, SMART RECYCLING
exists for materials and the inevitable shift in goal posts as the market evolves.
“Throughout 2011, there was an oversupply in the market and most of us were chasing volume,” he says. “You are also trying to look at the way the market is going from a material point of view. What we are seeing is a composition change coming through the streams. Cardboard and paper are declining whereas the plastic grades are increasing.” As a general trend, materials are also becoming smaller in size and more lightweight, he adds. The new facility is unique in that it claims to be the first UK plant to incorporate special- ist screening for highly compacted materials. In another first, the facility also features a specialist de-inking screen, which Casepak says ensures that newspapers and magazines recycled through the mixed collections reach the quality standard required by paper mills.
Often overlooked in the busy life of a MRF, manual sort- ers are vital to the day-to-day operations, fishing out and separating materials that cannot be recycled and sold on to the reprocessing industry. Whiskas cat pouches are one the many “problem” materials that have to be removed from the conveyor belts.
“The composite packaging items are difficult,” he admits.
“Those ones where they fall in the grey area between two materials are always tricky.”
As frustrating as these materials are, Thomas does have some sympathy with residents that intentionally, or not, place these items in kerbside collections.
“It takes a long time for that experience of what you can and can’t put in the system to really embed and sometimes we expect too much of the residents,” he says. “It’s still a young industry. How old is the MRF market?”
To drive down contamination, Casepak under- takes regular reviews with its local authority customers and also provides monthly reports, which include material composition, perfor- mance, quality issues and volume informa- tion. He accepts the MRF sector is not consist- ent and needs to improve. Looking ahead, he welcomes talk of a mandatory code of practice. “Let’s take the greyness out of the marketplace
and have more clarity about what the expectations are for MRFs,” he says. “It’s not easy to run a MRF because the material does challenge you from time to time, but you can do it properly if you set up in the right way and approach it in the right way from a management perspective.”
With Thomas’s track record, the new facility has a bright future.
CLEARSPAN BUILDINGS
WASTE COMPOSTING RECYCLING
Complete MRFs designed to suit your needs
• Complete solutions designed and engineered to fit your precise requirements
WASTETRANSFERSTATION 3
0mx4
• Conveyors, separators, sorting cabins and widest range of balers • Robust machinery for minimal downtime • Heavy duty constructed equipment to produce quality, dense bales to maximise volume and weight for transportation
8m,19mmaxheight lackpool,B
To find out more about how Middleton Engineering can design and build the right MRF to meet your needs, please call Colin Millard today on 01458 860264 or email
sales@middletonengineering.co.uk and visit
www.middletonengineering.co.uk
CompleteBuildingSolutions
Tel: 0800 840 6460
www.collinson.co.uk Riverside Industrial Park, TanYardRoad, Catterall, Preston, Lancashire, PR30HP
Middleton Engineering Ltd Ashcott Road, Meare, Glastonbury BA6 9SU Tel: 01458 860264 Fax: 01458 860311
sales@middletonengineering.co.uk www.middletonengineering.co.uk
MIDDLETON ENGINEERING
The UK’s leading engineers for the recycling industry • DESIGN • BUILD • INSTALL • SERVICE • March 2012 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 29
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