Published: 11/03/2021, 14:30
Fighting the War on Waste | Brammer Buck & Hickman
Fighting the war on waste has become one of our top priorities.
Quality Manager, Terry Bailey, is our own ‘eco-warrior’ and in the time he’s been with us, has reduced the plastic packaging in the company and helped us move away from bubble wrap, plastic jiffy filled bags, plastic tape, plastic void air bags and moved to recycled options these being: brown void paper that can be manually used at picking or is crinkled by machines in despatch, brown or branded paper tape, all our boxes are made from recycled cardboard. All the plastic pallet wrap that is now being used is pre-stretched, so it reduces the amount needed when wrapping pallets up.
At present we are using plastic picking bags that have a degrading agent in to speed up the breakdown of the plastic. We have trailed potato starch bags which proved to be good on trials to our network.
We are currently in the process at looking at a new material on the market made from flex sugar cane, this looks and feels as strong as plastic but we’re awaiting samples to trail so watch this space.
Not satisfied with reducing the use of plastics, Terry set his mind to look at the issue of waste rubber. As with many businesses, Brammer Buck & Hickman had previously worked with a waste partner who used the end of life rubber as a fuel source for creating energy from waste. However, Terry felt that there were greener, cleaner solutions that the company should be exploring.
“There’s always going to be a requirement for a business like ours to dispose of end-of-life rubber” Terry explains. “The question for me was whether we were doing so in the most sustainable way possible. After some investigation work, we’re now working closely with a company who take the rubber away, process it, clean it and recycle it for things like the rubber safety matting found in industrial environments or even the flooring in children’s playgrounds.”
According to WRAP, the founder of the 2018 ‘UK Plastics Pact’, it predicts that as much as five million tonnes of plastic waste is generated in the UK every year.
And with Terry’s help, we now have a better understanding of just where our recycling goes.
To begin the process, the “End of Life” rubber-based products are collected along with other waste products and moved to a transfer unit where they are individually weighed, checked, sorted and re-bulked before being sent to a Treatment & Re-Processing Facility.
Once transferred, the waste products are then offloaded and taken to individual process bays for either “Vulcanised” or “None Vulcanised” shredding.
Vulcanisation is the chemical process which ultimately enhances the molecular properties in synthetics and natural rubbers. The main distinction between vulcanised and unvulcanised rubber is that vulcanised rubber retracts to its original form even once applying oversized mechanical stress.
Once shredded, industrial-use magnets are then used to sweep the “shredded crumb” for steel and other ferrous metals.
The “Crumbed Rubber” is then shipped over to the Reprocesses where it is graded and formulated and sent to any number of manufacturers who will then create the finished article for sale e.g. surface aggregate, tarmac products, activity play areas etc.
