WRAP 2022 – Common myths around waste management
Since the importance of recycling is at the heart of everything we do, Greenbank is an avid supporter of Recycle Week 2022. Recycle Week (WRAP) was started by Recycle Now, a climate action non-governmental organisation (NGO) with the aim of tackling the climate crisis head-on. Naturally, preaching the importance of recycling is a key element of that. WRAP 2022 runs from the 17th Oct to the 23rd Oct and brings together retailers, waste management companies, governments, and others to achieve one common goal – getting the public and businesses to recycle more. Last year was a resounding success with over 29 million impressions.
WRAP 2022 Theme
The theme of WRAP 2022 is reducing waste contamination and myth busting some common misconceptions around recycling. These core topics are something we hear a lot about, both from our clients and prospects; we’d like to promote WRAP 2022 with our very own myth busting blog post too.
What is waste contamination? It’s when one pile of materials set to be recycled is contaminated with another material. For example, if someone had a bunch of polythene and cardboard that needed recycling, if those two were in the same bale, they would be considered contaminated. In order to be recycled, they would first need to be segregated and processed separately.
Why it’s important to reduce contamination?
There are several considerations here, firstly, let’s take a look at the local environmental impacts. Let’s say a local food processing company wanted to recycle food packaging but ended up contaminating the local area with the liquid remains, this could attract vermin, create nuisance and offence smells and also potentially impact the health of their workers. A carefully planned recycling process with adequate machinery, will help you mitigate any local contamination – which can easily be done without the correct guidance, risk assessment and expert help.
Secondly, businesses who often recycle their waste, more often than not, will generate revenue from rebates. It’s incredibly important to ensure that the description of the material offered matches what is within the bale, that no foreign objects, liquids or other material have managed to work its way in. Taking well thought out and planned steps to manage storage, processing and training operators will go a long way to preventing contamination at this level.
Always seek the help of a professional when it comes to managing your waste effectively, we provide free consultations, get in touch to book yours.
The common myths that we hear frequently:
1. Polystyrene can’t be recycled
Polystyrene can be recycled; unfortunately, not a lot of external options are available to businesses due to the varying density of the material. The easiest way to recycle polystyrene is to purchase a polystyrene compactor which can reward businesses with up to £1000 per tonne rebates.
2. Compacting liquid waste is a messy/untidy process
Companies that need to compact food waste with liquid content can experience challenges if using incorrect machinery. One solution to liquid/food waste handling could be one of our self-cleaning portable compactors – built for purpose and designed to resolve the key issues around this type of waste recycling.
If your business is suffering from messy liquid/food recycling it’s likely due to using a standard portable which leads to problems such as rotting, leaking waste, vermin attraction, and potentially overpowering odours. Liquid food waste compaction is achieved by countless businesses using fit for purpose machinery, staff training and robust procedures.
3. Separation of materials can be difficult for recycling
Products such as Stuffer Frames give the convenience of easy sorting; allowing operators to store same materials within fixed sized sacks, which can then be easily moved to processing into bales. Stuffer Frames are also a great efficiency enhancement too – allowing businesses to store one material type whilst another is being processed, if you’re struggling with segmentation then get in touch with our team, we’ve got Stuffer Frames available in various sizes and heaps of expert knowledge to support you.
Summary
Waste contamination is a massive issue because it completely prevents the possibility of recycling. That’s why we are glad that it’s the theme of Recycle Week 2022. Hopefully, as we all come together this week to push for more sustainable waste management, we will be able to exceed the number of people this campaign reached last year, helping drive more efficient waste management. From all of us at Greenbank, we would like to say thank you to our friends from Recycle Now for pushing the agenda and bringing everyone together to help the climate.
How can Greenbank help?
Greenbank’s goal is to make recycling efficient and sustainable. We achieve this by providing companies with recycling equipment that saves them time and money. From providing balers for plastics and cardboard to compactors for polythene, we aim to help increase the uptake of recycling by companies as well as them better segregating their waste to prevent contamination.
