How waste recycling helps our planet – Zero to Landfill

Find out more about commercial waste recycling in Devon at http://www.dcw.co.uk

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TRANSCRIPT
Up until now businesses have had to sort all their rubbish for recycling but many didn’t have the time, which is why much of it ended up in landfill. However, help is now at hand!
In Exeter, there is a place called Envirohub, which is the base for Devon Contract Waste. This company has started a ‘Zero to Landfill’ campaign because they would like to see everything recycled so landfill wouldn’t be needed anymore. To help with this, they have spent over four million pounds on a fantastic new waste sorting machine which means businesses won’t have to sort their rubbish anymore.
This machine is huge: it’s over ten metres high, covers the same area as one football pitches and it can sort up to 300 tonnes of rubbish per day — that’s the same weight as thirty seven and a half full size elephants.
So how does it work? Let’s go and see it in action!
Rubbish arrives at Envirohub from all around the county in dustcarts, front-loaders and wheelie bins, where it is all emptied out on the floor. Then it is lifted by this mechanical grabber and dumped into the hopper where it is shredded down into smaller pieces.

From the shredder, the rubbish goes up this belt to a big drum called a trommel screen. This tumbles the rubbish to remove all the soil and dust which gets turned into a fuel called Refuse-Derived Fuel product — or RDF for short. Nothing gets wasted here!Everything else continues on to here. This is called a ballistic separator and it walks everything upwards, but only the flat material makes it to the top. The three dimensional items can’t manage the climb and fall back onto another line below.
The flat stuff now falls onto a belt which goes under the first optical sorter. This is a line of small cameras that can recognise the different types of rubbish. This one is set to ‘see’ soft plastic film and when it sees some approaching, it triggers a jet of air which hits the item as it crosses the end of the belt, blowing it on to another belt behind. It’s very fast but watch closely and you’ll see the plastic flying off. That’s amazing!
This rubbish left on the belt drops down to another below. It then passes the second optical sorter, which is set to ‘see’ all paper and card products. It’s very important that nothing else gets through so just to make doubly sure there are two people inspecting it.
Remember the 3D stuff that didn’t make it to the top of the line earlier? Let’s go and see what happened to it. Here it is, going past a very powerful magnet which attracts all ferrous metal — that’s metals like iron and steel which are magnetic. Everything else won’t be attracted by the magnet so goes on to this eddy current machine which removes all non-ferrous metals such as aluminium — things like drink cans. All the metals are collected in the skips below.
The non-metallic material left on the belt then goes twice past another optical sorter. The first time it puts all plastic on one side and the second time it puts all paper and card on the other. Anything left over will also go into the fuel product or RDF we mentioned before.
Under the machine are all these bays where the different materials end up. The contents are eventually baled and wrapped like this ready to be transported.
What an amazing machine!
So where does it all go? The metal will be sent to be melted down so it can be made into other metal products. Paper will be recycled into tissue such as toilet roll and hand towels. Plastics are recycled into new products; some obvious ones such as carrier bags and bin liners, but also fleeces, umbrellas, children’s toys and even car bumpers. Card is generally shipped to China for recycling. This goes on ships that have delivered products from China into the UK, and need to return anyway, so it is reasonably environmentally friendly.
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20 thoughts on “How waste recycling helps our planet – Zero to Landfill”

  1. Ministers who're quarrelling for having comfortable vehicles in Sri Lanka.Think about the screams of whom have sacrificed their lives …. oh they've forgotten to think of them while tasting ice cream cups in the parliament. No need of confessions work and learn from systematical methodologies. Thank you devon*

    Reply
  2. Okay back to reality;

    maybe i would have a child saying all the follow (think of the children…) anyway. lest start at the start 😛

    Okay, at the start 00:50 all the plastic, yeah not good but most out pharmaceuticals require bi products from the process for refining plastics, there are other product created during this procedure as well.

    As plastic production from oil is reduce, the financial balance is upset and (although i can't be sure, and need to research the net comment more >), chemicals that would have been extracted in the plastic making process now have to be produce in other ways… and i wonder what the environmental effect of that is (maybe you could tell us DCW, you know, so we have a balanced picture)

    1:05 a lot of the plastic end up in the see? well there is an answer to that, put it in land fill. Don't ship it on boats around the UK were it falls of ship and,ship it out of the UK (yes you do, even though you try to make it look like you don't in this video, maybe you don't personally, so sell it to a broker and the broker sell it on)

    1:26 good… well maybe we should be working on better land fill technology, and not the fake benefits of recycling (in most cases) where we are only give one side/ on level of the equation.

    But we cant, no profit in that, and the EU placed fines on land fill, so that as an option can not be used, even though properly drained and contained land fills, seeded with the corret bacteria would be more beneficial to the environment.,

    Sorted land fill, in the way we sort recycling would become resources in the future, from recovered plastic mining (From half broken down plastics that required no energy to process, thus offsetting emissions)to chemical Recovery from Correctly drained and contained chemical paper land fills…. But there is not instant profit in that, yet its more environmentally friendly…hmm

    1:44 ahh the methane, mainly from bio wast, that we bup in bio digesters and harvest in the UK (Profit, from you waste, not about being green) then mulch the remaining produce in … you guessed it, landfill site 😛 (farming much comes from waster water plants, not bio plants)

    The bio gas is them burned producing Co2 and water (nummy profits), which is better (28 time better i hear). So separation of bio waste should be a priority, Government funded if it can be self paying (Sales of gas) and not private profiteers, selling the gas on the markets….. maybe some sort of huge bio land fill? slow digestion and gas recovery…would be cheaper and more accessible (oh wait, no profit lol)

    1:52, proper landfill site for recovering the nasty liquid (or may call them a version of oil that could be processed again) no instant profit…

    2:04 all them jumbo jets, wow that's a lot… maybe if we where told in tons, it may not have the same impact at jumbo jet we can visualize… You know them mainly 'empty space' vehicles… wonder how big a jumbo jet is when it crushed down for land fill…. Not a big point, just an example of manipulation of the facts 🙂

    2:09 i don't get it, why are they showing a crab/lobster catcher on the beach? That's where you store them (well used to, now they get nicked if you do)… Misleading imagery?

    2:12 ah, the common everyday filter material used by the public (i jest), always getting thrown out with the trash…. or maybe it a rare case of something falling of a boat, on the beach, as they worked on its pump ? and then followed by more imagery or general harbor debris, which would not be affected my subject raise in this video.

    even the more environmental fisherman spread trash. In strong seas, bits of cut rope and broken off things get wash of the deck

    will leave it for now… only at 2:19, but you get the idea

    STOP pretending its all about saving the world, its all out your Profits! So much more could be done, and done right, but there no cash in that! Miss leading BS…

    Reply
  3. HOW RECYCLING DOES DEFINITELY NOT HELP OUR PLANET:
    1. Contamination If there are impurities or toxins on the original
    material, like lead, they’ll usually make it through the recycling process and end up buried in the new product, like say, a soda can. Have a nice day
    2.hundreds of buildings in Taiwan made from recycled steel have been giving people gamma radiation poisoning.
    '' be sure to recycle"
    3.The recycling process produces pollutants In 2009 there were about 179,000 waste collection vehicles on the road. The exhaust fromf those vehicles contains over three dozen airborne toxins.
    '' good ole curb collection''
    4.One recycling plant in Washington state produces more toxic emissions than any other
    factory the next three biggest polluters in the area ae also recycling plants.
    ''saving the planet"
    5. When paper is recycled, it’s all mixed together into a pulp. That pulp
    is washed, cleaned, and then pressed into new paper sheets. During that process,, inks, cleaning chemicals, and dyes are filtered out into sludge. The sludge is then sent to a landfill, where it leaches dozens of toxic chemicals and heavy metals into groundwater. 'nice right?'
    '' matter cannot be created nor destroyed''
    6. There are about seven types of plastic that you’ll find in day to day life, and only two of them are recyclable.
    "' W T F " " O M G "
    7. Plastic is a pretty tricky animal overall, but in all honesty, we just have no idea what to do with it.
    " It costs $4,000 US to recycle one ton of plastic "
    8. oil is a pretty major pollutant. So it makes sense to try to recycle used oil right? Wrong.recycling oil creates even more toxic chemicals in the process.
    " really? " " yes really"
    9. Aluminum ? Disappointingly recycled soda cans can’t give you the quality you need to build an airplane, or even to use in electronic circuits. Its just shit aluminum..
    "" they never told us THAT "
    10. More aluminum; The average American drinks 2.5 cans of soda per day.That’s about 778 million cans. If 100,000 cans are recycled every minute (they are), we’re still about 600 million cans short. And that’s just in one day So in only one years time, doing the math for you, 2,100,000,000 cans unrecycled…
    "Sorry to bring you the bad news"

    Reply

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