Contractors operating in the south-west of England have no excuse to send waste from their sites to landfill now that a super-efficient 拢4m recycling plant has just been installed on the outskirts of Bristol.
ETM Recycling commissioned the plant from Meath-based specialist manufacturer Turmec to double the amount of waste it can handle and process at its Ashton Vale site. The new plant can handle 150,000 tonnes per year.
鈥淥ur previous plant would take 24 hours to process what this new plant can deal with in an hour 鈥� 80 tonnes,鈥� says director Amy McCormack, who heads the recycling division of ETM, a family business.
The division is a preferred supplier for main contractors and housebuilders such as Skanska, Willmott Dixon, BAM and Galliford Try. The investment in the new plant was, in part, in response to their demand.
鈥淭he contractors that choose us are the ones that have environmental management systems at the forefront of their procurement so their sites have to be as close to 鈥榸ero waste to landfill鈥� as possible,鈥� explains McCormack. 鈥淭his new plant is the only one in the south-west that can process construction and demolition waste to that degree.鈥�
The plant extracts every last piece of recyclable material, right down to individual nails. It achieves this through a process employing 20 conveyor belts, six magnets 鈥� one of which weighs eight tonnes 鈥� and three quality control sheds where teams of up to 16 people sort through the residue.
It is supported by a fleet 19 skip lorries, five roll-on-roll-off (roro) units and an articulated lorry with a bulk tanker. This operates across the south-west and 鈥榦ver the bridge鈥� into south Wales.
At the time of writing, the plant was only operating at 60% of its capacity as it was being run in and snagged. But even though McCormack thinks it is unlikely to ever operate round the clock, the signs are that demand will increase.
鈥淟andfills are closing in the area while waste is travelling further for residual disposal, and we want to avoid sending our waste to landfill at all costs,鈥� she says. 鈥淥ur old plant was at full capacity and was not efficiently processing and diverting enough waste from landfill.鈥�
Before the new plant was up and operating ETM would only accept waste from its own fleet but now it also deals with national waste disposal contractors such as Biffa, Suez and Grundon and local operators.
鈥淚 make money on segregating the waste and then being able to get rid of it cheaply. We hire our own skips out at 拢200 and charge other operators 拢110 a tonne to tip here,鈥� McCormack explains. 鈥淲e sort out the mixed construction waste and then sell it on to our outlets.鈥�
Clean hardcore is the main product and it goes straight to the company鈥檚 own quarry. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 brilliant for us,鈥� she says, 鈥渂ecause that is a closed loop.鈥�
Wood is another major revenue-stream, with 600 tonnes a month being recovered. Grade A material is chipped and re-used as horse bedding while the rest 鈥� the majority in fact 鈥� is chipped for biomass fuel. UPVC window frames and doors are also picked out for recycling, while the five magnets pick out all the ferrous metal objects.
鈥淲e鈥檝e got a whole skip full of nails and other small objects that were previously mixed,鈥� comments McCormack.
The sixth and final machine is an eddy current separator that brings out the revenue-stream that the previous recycling plant missed: the non-ferrous metals.聽This uses eddy currents 鈥� an oscillating magnetic field 鈥� that induces a current in any good electrical conductor that, like aluminium or copper, is not ferromagnetic.
The whole operation started as a sideline to the main ETM business, launched in 1994 when Edward McCormack set up in business as a 鈥榤an-and-海角社区app鈥� groundworks contractor. The core of the business was Bristol City Council鈥檚 highways and traffic management work but it has grown well beyond that.
Fujitsu, Siemens, Kingston Communications, Wessex Water, MEB, Telewest, Eurobell and Amey Highways number among its long-term private sector clients while Bristol City Council, North Somerset County Council, Bath & NE Somerset Council and South Gloucestershire County Council are among its local authority customers. The company now employs more than 200 staff.
The recycling business was a natural fit, as the company had a quarry at Durnford, near Long Ashton in Somerset, where it could take all the waste from the roadworks and from where it sourced its own aggregates.
After using just one skip lorry to collect the waste, Edward McCormack became one of the first in the UK to invest in a Rubble Master compact crusher, using it to boost production of clean, screened hardcore that could be sold either to Bristol City Council or to contractors building roads for house-builders.
鈥淭he whole motivation behind this was simply to increase production of hardcore but we outgrew that first machine in about two and a half years, when we then bought the Kiverco machine we鈥檙e replacing now,鈥� says Amy McCormack. 鈥淲e never thought of this becoming a business in its own right but it flourished as more major contractors came to us for their hardcore.鈥�
This led to her joining the business from a management consultancy eight years ago, as recycling was showing greater potential than at first envisaged.
She says the prospects are even better now as the blue-chip clients ETM caters for are increasingly putting quality before price.
鈥淭hese companies put environmental performance above price, so if another skip company came in and undercut me by a tenner it wouldn鈥檛 matter because their plant couldn鈥檛 divert all their waste from landfill,鈥� she explains. 鈥淭o achieve their targets they need companies with exceptional plant that process their waste with absolute duty of care and divert it from landfill.
鈥淭hey can come here and audit us and be absolutely certain there are no issues concerning duty of care."
This article was first published in the聽
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