Cardiff prepares to sort at speed

Archiv – The first council-operated plant of its scale in the UK, Cardiff County Council’s new Material Recycling Facility will be capable of separating recyclables ten times faster than the authority’s previous facility.The first council-operated plant of its scale in the UK, Cardiff County Council’s new Material Recycling Facility will be capable of separating recyclables ten times faster than the authority’s previous facility.
The unit has the capacity to process 60 000 tonnes of co-mingled, mixed, dry recyclable materials per annum. These will be comprised of: glass, bottles and jars (30%); plastic bottles and containers (5%); steel and aluminium cans and packaging (5%); newspapers and magazines (45%); and mixed paper, including cardboard and card packaging (8%).
Designed to operate at a throughput of 15 tonnes per hour, the plant has the ability to run consistently at a rate of 18 tonnes per hour.
Councillor Elgan Morgan, Executive Member for Environment and Transport, comments: ’The new recycling plant will be far more efficient and will help Cardiff to meet the challenging recycling targets for 2009/2010 set by the Welsh Assembly.’
At the heart of the unit’s Bollegraaf sorting systems are star screens produced by Lubo Systems Screening & Recycling. These separate cardboard from recovered paper, as well as round material (plastics, glass bottles and cans) and flat material (newspapers and magazines). General Managing Director Heiman Bollegraaf observes: ’With the new system, we only need to use one truck which transports the different types of waste. This has three big advantages: it is cheaper, it is more efficient and it is much better for the environment.’