Where does your business’s waste and recycling end up?

The first question to be asked in order to answer this question is what is your business doing with its waste and recycling? If you are using bins, skips or cages then the answer is going to be different to a business that uses recycling equipment for its cardboard, paper and plastic.

General waste
All general waste currently gets handled the same whether you solely use containers like bins or you use recycling equipment as well. General waste cannot be recycled so it is usually collected in bins by your local council or private waste collector. This waste will either be sent to a landfill site or incinerated.

Using recycling bins for cardboard and plastic
This is where collections start to differ. Recycling bins are merely containers for loose boxes and plastic. You are not doing anything to the waste other than getting rid of it as it comes. You are essentially saying to your collector, here is my recyclable waste now you take it away and do all the work. These bins are called Dry Mixed Recycling bins and nothing is segregated unless of course you only produce one type of recyclable waste. The collector needs to segregate the waste either manually or by machine back at the depot. When this is complete the cardboard and plastic will be baled manually and either sent to a UK paper mill, British Plastics or exported to a country that will happily take the UK’s waste.

Rewind back to the part where you are asking the collector to do all the work for you. This is expensive – in fact commercial bin prices are rising all the time and are always subject to change.

You may think bins are doing all the work for you and they are AFTER the waste leaves your site but prior to that your bins are actually a pain. They are voluminous yet it does not take long to fill a bin with cardboard boxes. Staff members often have to break down the boxes, which is a tedious and time consuming exercise. Bins also need space which unfortunately means many businesses lose open areas such as car park spaces and alleyways.

Using recycling balers for cardboard and plastic
By using a baler or compactor at your business you are cutting out a large chunk of the recycling process described in the previous section. You are segregating and baling on site so your cardboard and plastic is ready to be recycled immediately. You do not need the local council or a private waste collector to handle your recyclables. Instead a recycler who acts as a middle man between your business and the final destination of the bales will collect the baled materials from you. With very little work for the recycler to do apart from transport the bales, they charge far less for collections than councils and private waste firms do.

Baling on site also ensures 100% of the waste is recycled. Once a bale is tied properly it is not going to break. Unfortunately loose waste can overflow into alternative waste streams and can go missing during transit or in poor weather.

Your business will have far higher green credentials when baling on site as opposed to using bins. Add in the cost, space and labour savings by having a reduced amount of bins and you are on to a winner.

With a huge range of recycling balers and other waste reducing equipment available to rent or buy, QCR will ensure your recyclable waste always gets to its rightful destination. Talk to us and we’ll offer you a free site survey and free trial of our equipment.