Island Waste, Guernsey’s largest independent waste recycling business, is diverting 100 percent of the island’s waste from landfills after installing a twin ram baler and conveyor from Middleton Engineering.
Guernsey is located off the coast of Normandy. With the only landfill site at Mont Cuet expected to close in 18 months, baling and exporting the island’s trash for re-use is now key to the Guernsey’s waste management.
Middleton Engineering has designed, manufactured and installed a complete system for Island Waste, with two feed conveyors for the baler including a bunker discharge conveyor to overcome space limitations. The baler joins an existing Middleton ME70 semi-automatic baler in use since 2007.
Island Waste currently diverts more than 12,000 metric tons of rubbish from landfill each year, achieving an 80 percent recovery rate for recyclables. The new baler, which incorporates a specially developed dual tying head, with both steel wire and plastic strapping options, will increase capacity and throughput at the company’s MRF in St Andrews, and for the first time enable the remaining 20 percent of material to be baled as RDF and diverted from landfill.
Baled RDF must be tied using plastic strapping to satisfy the requirements of downstream processors. The dual tying head enables rapid switching from one waste stream to another, with the additional advantage that plastic strapping is some 40 percent cheaper than steel wire and better for the environment, the company says.
The new Middleton Engineering ME80F twin ram baler is able to produce extremely dense and uniform bales optimized for transportation and with ideal compaction for RDF, the company says. Destined eventually for Dutch incinerators, the bales are first wrapped for improved storage and handling and then shipped utilizing empty capacity on curtainsider trailers returning to the UK mainland.
UK waste management company W&S Recycling Services based in Poole, Dorset, late last year installed a twin-ram baler from Middleton Engineering as part of an effort to recycle rigid plastics from household waste recycling centers and commercial customers across Dorset.