Industrial Balers and Compactors for Waste Recycling

Contributed by George Rebstrum who is an adviser on industrial balers for businesses.

With landfill prices skyrocketing and government recycling targets getting stricter, every business needs to take waste reduction seriously in order to keep their costs down.

Industrial balers are the perfect solution – these powerful machines effectively compress and bind materials into bales for convenient shipping and recycling.

The following guide will explain how industrial balers work and how they can benefit your business.

How Balers Work

Industrial balers can be stand-alone, or form part of a material handling process with conveyor systems and shredders. They function by feeding in loose material either on the side or top (depending on the baler style). This in-feed leads to a chamber where the material accumulates and is compressed into a bale.

The finished bale is then bound by wire, plastic or string for easy handling and compact waste disposal.

Balers can be used for a range of materials. There are also specialised balers available for the extraction of oils and liquids from material, thus providing a streamlined recycling process.

Types of Balers

The two main types of baling machine styles are vertical and horizontal. This describes the way the material travels through the machine itself and also refers to the way the waste material is fed into the machine.

With horizontal balers, loose materials are generally introduced in one end and flow to the other end where the finished bale is ejected.

They take up more floor space than vertical balers, but they can handle greater load capacity and have more automated functions.

Vertical balers are often single load machines, so are perfect for premises with limited space. They are typically loaded from the front or the top and need to be manually unloaded when the compacting and baling is complete, meaning they’re a good choice for smaller facilities, especially those that often deal with waste that is lighter in density and volume.

In addition to these two main types, bale size is also an important consideration. The larger the bale, the less frequently it must be changed, which therefore requires the least labour in terms of tying off bales or moving them with powered equipment. Larger balers however obviously aren’t suited to locations where space is scarce.

You can also consider further options to make industrial balers more convenient for your business, such as automatic in-feed of loose material and auto-tie.

Advantages of Industrial Balers

Balers are highly effective at both compacting waste and recycling materials. They:

Reduce storage space requirements by compressing material and making it more stackable.
Reduce handling by powered equipment such as pallet jacks and lift trucks.
Reduce labour requirements.
Reduce landfill costs.
Improve the sorting of recyclable materials from waste.

The Difference between Balers and Compactors

I have found that some business owners are confused by the difference between balers and compactors. In a nutshell, balers help companies to improve their recycling with a minimum of fuss, while compactors merely compress waste to make it easier to tackle. Let’s clarify further:

Balers take loose, recyclable products and compress them into a bundle that is bound and tied for easy handling. They allow businesses to take valuable material out of their waste stream and sort them into bales for collection. This minimises the cost of waste disposal, makes your material easier to recycle and gives the waste and recycling process a lower carbon footprint.

Compactors simply compress mixed waste materials into a contained area to be picked up by your waste collector. This process means that waste does not have to be sorted by your business, but it also entails a higher chance of contaminating materials such as cardboard or plastic so that they are rendered unrecyclable.

Conclusion

Industrial balers are an effective waste solution for every business in terms of reducing costs and meeting recycling targets. These machines can be bought or rented, making them affordable for every budget.

Recycling of Waste Cardboard

Are you trying to find a way to get rid of unwanted waste cardboard? You could just go ahead and fill up the landfills to overflowing, or you could try one of the following ideas. There are probably a dozen or more ways to get rid of cardboard; but for the sake of not being extremely boring, I’m only going to tell you about three of them.

1) An economic and environmentally friendly way to get rid of your unwanted cardboard, is by recycling it. Today there are many places that will actually pay you for your waste cardboard in the same way that they pay for bottles and cans. If you do decide to recycle, not only will you fulfill your duty to be kind to the earth, but you could also go home with a little extra spending money in your pocket.

2) A charitable way to get rid of your clean, unwanted waste cardboard, is by donating it for arts and crafts projects.

You can call local childcare centers, schools, and churches to find out who might need it. Many places that work with children use cardboard to make signs or for other arts and crafts projects; it is much more affordable than poster board. If you do decide to donate your cardboard, you will be able to sleep well knowing that you have done your good deed for the day.

3) If you live in an area that has cold winters, and people still use fireplaces; you can get rid of waste cardboard by recycling it as a fire starter. The most important thing to remember if you plan to use your cardboard to fuel the fire; is to store it in a safe place away from your house, preferably in a shed not attatched to the house. Make sure that your cardboard is in a place where it will stay dry, and stored away from flammable liquids and gases. If you have an excessive amount of cardboard, you can share some with your neighbors; be sure to tell them about the proper way to store the unused cardboard until they are ready to use it.

I do hope that these ideas have been helpful; if not, you could just throw it in the trash, but then again if you do that, we just might run out of landfills.

 

Closed Loop Best Waste Recycling Practice

Article by vincet smith

In the process of recycling, the used materials are processed and shaped into new products. This process helps to prevent waste, also decrease consumption of new materials, and decrease energy use. Closed Loop Recycling is the best way. In the process recycled materials can be reused to decrease the effects to the surroundings.

Materials that are to be recycled are composed and then brought to a recycling collection center where they are sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials that will, hopefully, be recycled once again. A recycling bin, or a recycling container, is simply nothing more than a trash can that is used to hold recyclable materials prior to them being taken to a recycle center. Recycling bins are available in various sizes and different colors for use in homes, office, parks, beaches, and large facilities. Recycling bins are usually used for plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and paper. All you have to do to recycle is put materials that can be recycled into proper recycling containers. It seems simple, but according to the Natural Marketing Institute, only about half of Americans recycle all the time. Everyone wants to help the environment and reduce waste, so why do so few of us recycle? Well, it takes proper planning to start properly recycling in the home or office. In order to recycle effectively, you first have to have the proper recycling bins available for use.

Proper recycling bins are designed so that they are easily familiar and are marked with slogans promoting recycling. Recycling bins are obtainable in dissimilar colors so that recyclers can differentiate between the dissimilar types of materials to be placed in them for recycling. For instance, blue bins are typically used for metal and plastic bottles and cans, and green and red recycling bins are often used for paper goods. If the proper recycling bins are obtainable, it makes it simple to recycle even for the most unlikely recyclers. Think about it for a second. If a bright blue recycling bin with the “Reuse, Reduce, Recycle” logo on the side of it is placed next to a trash can, how could someone place a plastic bottle or can in with the usual trash in the gray can next to it?

Even those of us who do not recycle on a routine basis are very likely to place their cans and bottles in the bright blue “Recycle Materials” recycling bin. But without good placement, for instance if the recycling can was across the way from the usual gray trash can, people would be much more likely not to take the extra steps essential to recycle. That is why proper placement of recycling bins is so necessary to increase the percentage of Americans who actually recycle on a daily basis. It takes some work and a lot of consideration and planning, but with good placement of recycling containers in the home, office, park, beach, restaurant, or large public facility, you could reach close to 100% recycling compliance.

To start, you have to purchase the proper recycling bins for your individual facility’s needs. With recycling bins coming in many different shapes and sizes, you can be sure to find the ideal bin for you. You have to decide whether you need a small home recycling bin to being recycling cans and bottles at home or a big Rubbermaid recycling station for the office to get employees recycling. Whatever type you need, you can surely find what you are looking for and then, put them in the right spot to make it easy and easy for employees, family members, or customers to recycle their cans, bottles, and paper with no having to take extra steps or think twice about it. Remember the key, proper placement of recycling bins is necessary to recycling efficiently.

Corporate Waste Recycling and Economy Sustainability

Article by Envirosafe Solutions

In businesses all over the world, waste recycling has taken a back seat in comparison to recycling and returning former end-of-life products to the workplace. Corporations which can maintain this high level of organization are able to measure how much product usage and waste can cost them financially and environmentally. Instead, they are returning recycled products to their own offices by creating a closed system in which they can dramatically reduce costs of new products and replacement products. This creativity and innovation is best mimicked when a minimum of 70% of end-of-life products are returned to these businesses. Financially, environmentally, and creatively, this is an excellent way to be eco friendly, portray your company as effectively “green” to your customers, and to help reduce product turnover costs, which can be high when added up.

Roland Geyer and Tim Jackson investigated supply loops and their various constraints, showing how recycling and reuse can be one of the best ways companies can make their systems cost effective and eco friendly. This is called creating forward supply chains. You are pushing your innovative creativity into future supply chains by breaking down used materials and creating recovery of value and usefulness to be turned around and put back into the business. This idea is not only a safe business decision, but it’s also good for our earth. One of the concerns which might be presented in implementing these steps is: how are we going to do that?

Many companies exist today which take your recyclables and turn them into value-added Environmental Cleaning Products which you can use again in your business. A lot of these organizations are local businesses which can service your business specifically, rather than your city or state regulated recycling efforts. This can save you a great deal on buying new products and, while there is a cost in doing this, it can still be a great deal cheaper than taking care of old waste and buying new office supplies. It is certainly worth a little bit of research to find organizations which would provide this service for your company.

Waste Recycling with Waste Compactors

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintians a detailed analysis of how to effectively recycle food scraps and yard waste for municipalitites and large organizations. The article and report, which can be found on their website, provides an overview of some of the best practices employed by large national corpoarations such as Stop & Shop, Hannaford’s, and Anheuser-Busch. In each case, compactors play a vital role in handling large volumes of organic waste.

The EPA is targeting large-scale recycling of food scraps and yard waste to help increase the nationwide recycling rate to 35%. Right now, these two categories account for 25% of the total municipal solid waste in the USA. To handle this waste stream, the number of collection and recycling programs increased in the 1990s, but the recovery rate is still low with only 2.5% of food scraps being recycled. The EPA’s goal is to double the recovery rate to 5 percent.

Read the full article and report at: .

Municipal Waste Recycling

The United State Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) as everyday items we use and then throw away, such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. This comes from our homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses.

In 2010, Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash and recycled and composted over 85 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 34.1 percent recycling rate. On average, we recycled and composted 1.51 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.43 pounds per person per day (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

The EPA encourages practices that reduce the amount of waste needing to be disposed of, such as waste prevention, recycling, and composting.

WasteCare Corporation specializes in waste processing, cost-reduction, and waste recycling solutions through the use of innovative products, streamlining, and better resource utilization. We are ready to assist businesses and municipalitites both small and large that have an interest in reducing waste processing and waste disposal costs. Visit our website to see more our of innovative and affordable waste recycling solutions.

Eliminate Waste by Recycling

Look around. What kind of waste do you see? If you’re like most other companies and organizations, there is probably a lot of waste. It lurks in dark corners, just out of place and blatantly hides in plain site where no one dares to remove. It can be a difficult game, but if you know what to look for, then you win most of the time.

The waste can be in the office or it can be on the production floor. It may even be lurking in shipping and receiving. The point is that it can be anywhere, so the earlier you start looking and the earlier you identify it, the earlier you can make gains to eliminate it. You can seldom fully eliminate waste, there is necessary waste that can’t be avoided, but you can make improvements.

Making improvements and striving to improve by waste recycling is what everyone should try to achieve. This is a team effort that often makes people roll their eyes, but it’s true. It will take a group effort to make changes and keep the changes going forward. The worst that can happen is that all efforts made to solve a problem that they will lose if you let things go back the way it was.

Talk about waste; imagine all the effort and time going into fixing a problem and just letting it go back to the way it was. You have wasted man hours and labor and worst of all, you have shown that once something changes, nobody can commit to making those changes stick. So why bother changing anything in the future, it won’t do any good. It discourages people from suggesting ideas and it discourages people from putting those changes in motion.

The bottom line is the changes to become more efficient and less wasteful are both important parts of making a splash in the current economic climate. If you are not striving to get better, then you are going to be left behind. There is always an up and comer that is willing to work harder and longer for what you have already worked to earn. They won’t give up and neither should you. If you can keep improving and making your customers happy, then there is no reason you can’t succeed.

WasteCare is ready to assist businesses both small and large that have an interest in reducing waste processing and waste disposal costs. Visit our website to see more our of innovative and affordable waste recycling solutions.

Electronic Waste Recycling and The Environment

We have really improved our world technologically in the past, and innovation continues to rise as researchers and scientists continue to create more and more labor-saving, entertaining and working devices. Unfortunately, as our technological world expands we have also created a need to keep up with it all. Therefore, as we move on from the sciences of yesterday to the next big thing, loads and loads of electronic waste emerge. From computers to mobile phones, I pods, mp3 players, laptops, adapters, digital cameras and much, much more, everything is constantly being improved and customized. It seems as if the electronic market has become more competitive than ever, as well as more and more specialized.

Any electronic products used for telecommunications, entertainment, and processing data are frequently advanced and therefore, frequently replaced.

With higher and higher numbers of accessories and additional functions, features, new hardware and software programs, and so much more, it seems that an up-to-date computer, or other electronic device becomes antiquated within a couple of years. And this is not much of an exaggeration, considering the increase of features that are continuously being developed and marketed.

Solutions to the resulting amount of electronic waste are already in order. With any luck, ways to recycle electronic waste will increase at least at half the rate that we develop new technological ideas. But, after only a little experience, we realized the need to keep up with controlling the huge amount of electronic waste, as much as we need to keep up with all of our new electronic inventions. However, the concept of recycling electronic waste is being developed at too slow a pace.

The good news is that recycling and caring for the environment are also very important to many individuals – this includes electronic waste.

We have begun to recognize the ability to re-use electronic parts along with the continuing development of new technology. My hope is that development of new technology using recycled parts of old electronic devices will, with any luck, also increase. Of course, the elimination of waste build-up and lessening an ever-increasing number of landfills all over the world is becoming more and more of a priority for people. Especially in Asia, the development of new technology, combined with the re-use of old electronic parts is being aggressively approached.

The erratic development of more and more technological devices has created for us a world we would have never imagined in the past. It seems as though development in technology is moving faster now than ever before. We have created a highly technological world – and that is definitely a good thing. We just want to remember to preserve this world too, by eliminating the amount of waste in general and recycling as much as possible – from aluminum cans to discarded electronic devices. Making the world better is a job for everyone. Find out about all of the things that you can do to help save this beautiful and not to mention technology brilliant planet.

Anne Clarke writes numerous useful articles on solar power and the environment.

Tips for Simple Waste Recycling

Article by Christine Harrell

There are a good number of waste recycling programs that are started in towns and municipalities every year with homeowners and business owners trying to adjust their waste management to the new programs. Often times, sorting waste into different categories for processing is the one big area where people have difficulty. With the proper recycling bins, however, it becomes easier and more convenient to meet the requirements for curbside or haul it yourself programs.

The right containers will help to save time and money for residents and businesses alike.

Determining Sizing Needs

Sizing for recycling containers is the first step for developing a convenient routine for handling recyclables. Recycling receptacles that are too large will be inconvenient to drag or haul and overflowing bins don’t serve much purpose if waste gets all over the ground. For homeowners, every household will be different, but the average size family would probably generate enough recyclable waste in a week to fill a 30 gallon container.

For business needs, the amount of employees will dictate exactly how much waste is generated. The best method for handling office waste is to have recycling bins at each desk along with 10 gallon containers in common areas. Each of these bins would then be emptied into heavy duty units of at least 90 gallons for pickup by the city, or even full sized dumpsters for large companies.

Making Waste Sorting More Convenient

The sizes cited above are for total waste streams, but nearly all programs require waste to be sorted out prior to pickup or drop off at a recycling center. So while the overall waste might fit into one container, handling the different materials requires some specialized recycling containers.

For use in the home, duo bins are perfect; they are dual compartment totes with separate hinged lids to allow quick and easy sorting and hauling. Inside the home, plastic rider containers can be snapped directly to the regular garbage bin to keep recyclables out of the trash with a little advanced separation. When organizing garbage for the curb, homeowners are best suited to purchase a set of recycling bins, usually four at a 10-gallon size, that can clip together or stack within each other to make hauling easier.

The situation is a little different in the office. Having a separate recyclables container in every office is ideal with desk-sized bins and this can be achieved with the same type of riders or duo totes. Common areas should have larger recycling containers and a dedicated paper receptacle should be placed next to every copier, printer, and fax machine. For high traffic areas, like outdoor picnic areas or a company cafeteria, all-in-one units can be placed to handle every stream in one location with separate compartments and a 90 gallon capacity.

Recycling containers today are designed with the needs of many different municipal and business programs in mind. With the right capacity and sorting capability, the right receptacles will make programs more convenient and help increase resident participation.

 

Starting A Waste Recycling Business

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established resources for individuals or groups looking to start a waste recycling business. These resources included everything from writing and refining business plans to securing funding through grants and investors to investigating the financial benefits in the various recycled good market.

Business opportunities exist in over 50 different manufacturing sectors using recycled glass, aluminum, wood, plastic, and other materials. The possibility exists for high demand in select local markets for recovered materials, and the savvy green-entrepreneur needs to conduct preliminary research to ensure their business plan will be greeted favorably and   result in success.

The EPA offers specific guides for different materials and manufacturing sectors and also provides literature about how recycling-focused businesses and industries can stimulate local economies. Not only can you help to improve the environment and reduce waste, but you can also earn a living and be a job-creator in the new, green, economy!

Visit the EPA website, http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/rrr/rmd/bizasst/bizplan.htm, for more information.