Using technology at your materials recovery facility
In this guide:
- Waste contractor's guide to recycling construction waste
- Waste management at the start of construction projects
- Working with producers of construction waste
- Sorting and handling construction waste
- Staff efficiency at your materials recovery facility
- Using technology at your materials recovery facility
- Producing high quality recovered waste materials
Waste management at the start of construction projects
How materials recovery facilities can advise customers about waste management before starting a project.
It is important to advise your customer about site waste practices at the beginning of a construction and demolition project. The earlier you can discuss this, the better for both parties. There are a number of ways in which you can advise your customers about waste management before or at the very beginning of a project. These include:
- a video of waste and recycling services offered
- visits to the materials recovery facility
- assistance with their site waste management policy
- offers of on-site waste management staff
- pre-project meeting to assist in waste management planning
The process of getting to know waste should also start early in the supply chain. You could consider asking to evaluate building projects at tender stage and even at the planning stages. You should visit new construction and demolition sites to assess likely waste materials and to determine the likely sequence in which different waste types will arise.
You can use tools and methodologies, to predict the type and volume of waste materials likely to arise at each phase of a building project.
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Working with producers of construction waste
How waste contractors and material recovery facilities can improve waste management practices on construction sites.
Materials recovery facilities and waste management contractors can encourage customers to manage waste effectively themselves. To do this, you must know the type of waste produced and educate customers on the proper way to present waste.
In rural or isolated areas where transport costs become a limiting factor, you could use drawbar trailers, which can fit up to six skips on the same vehicle. This will increase the geographic area that you can economically serve and increase the range that outputs can be transported for reprocessing.
You could establish satellite transfer cabins to combine waste from a wide area before onward transport to the materials recovery facility. You can also use the services of fully vetted third-party skip businesses to further your reach.
You should also show transparency in the onward destination and sale price of output materials, especially from higher profile customers such as blue-chip construction firms.
Meeting your customers' waste requirements
You should be prepared to offer customers a wide range of services. Customers, especially the larger ones, may expect a more comprehensive service from their waste management contractors including project-specific and material-specific recovery rates and breakdowns of the fate of all waste processed.
Some construction and demolition contractors or their clients now audit waste management systems. This is usually done both at the time of tender where environmental and data reporting issues could influence the award of a waste management contract, or during the construction project itself, to ensure compliance with promised performance.
Knowing the construction and demolition waste
Construction and demolition waste varies in shape, density, water content and many other properties. To ensure that you maximise recovery, you must be aware of exactly what is being brought onto the site. This is simple if a regular business relationship exists with the constructor and where you are using your own drivers and are fully trained in waste receipt criteria.
You must inspect all incoming waste from third-party tippers such as independent skip hire businesses, as this may result in unknown material entering the site. If you accept waste from third-party businesses, the skips should be tipped immediately and contents inspected for non-compliance with the site licence.
You should prepare for waste produced to vary with the season - peak periods include spring and summer. Construction and demolition activity is reduced in winter and this is a good time to implement significant changes to your materials recovery facility systems or equipment if needed.
Separating materials at source
You should encourage customers to separate construction and demolition waste before it reaches you. This can result in a more orderly site, safer working conditions and an enhanced reputation. By using material dedicated skips, you can make the recovery process easier and the cost to your customers and yourself will also be reduced. Materials that can be separated include wood, plasterboard, brick and rubble.
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Sorting and handling construction waste
The legal controls that apply to handling construction and demolition waste at materials recovery facilities.
At every stage during sorting and handling, you should process construction waste to optimise material recovery and diversion from landfill.
The waste you handle must be accompanied by a waste transfer note from the time it leaves the producer until it reaches its final destination. The waste transfer note must have a European Waste Catalogue (EWC) code that identifies the waste to each person that handles it. You must also handle and store waste so that you avoid harm to people or the environment.
You can only handle hazardous waste if you are authorised to do so by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA). Hazardous waste includes asbestos and materials contaminated by oil and chemicals. For information on how to comply with hazardous waste controls.
You should ensure there is regular communication, for example with two-way radios, between the weighbridge and personnel working at your materials recovery facility. This enables weighbridge staff who are given waste transfer notes by skip drivers to inform colleagues in the waste receiving bay about incoming waste, and in return they can be quickly alerted should non-conforming waste be tipped.
You should work closely with waste producers and, where possible, visit construction and demolition projects in advance. Once the waste begins to arise, you should perform a series of checks verifying that material placed by waste producers into skips (or other containers) conforms to details entered on documentation. By doing this you can identify any non-conformities quickly and feedback to the customer.
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Staff efficiency at your materials recovery facility
How to make sure that you use your staff in the most efficient way at your materials recovery facility.
Employees play a vital role within materials recovery facilities in ensuring efficiency.
Hiring materials recovery staff
Using hand sorting ensures the quality of your final product, as humans are still more effective at extracting most objects from the waste flow.
Using agency staff or short-term contracts will offer flexibility as material flow fluctuates throughout the year. However, you should retain core staff to train and motivate temporary workers. Training your permanent employees to operate all the equipment in the materials recovery facility will offer flexibility in case of staff absence.
When recruiting senior staff, you should consider looking outside the waste industry. With similarities to a production line, a manufacturing expert might get more out of materials recovery facility staff and equipment than someone from a waste background.
Motivate and train materials recovery staff
To maximise material recovery, you should keep picking staff motivated, as the job may be routine. You should make working environments well lit, comfortable and safe and consider installing:
- dust extractors
- air conditioning and heating units
- sound systems - to keep workers entertained
- canteens
- changing rooms
It is important to give staff regular breaks and, where appropriate, rotate staff between tasks.
You may also consider using a financial incentives scheme to motivate picking staff and other employees such as drivers and maintenance workers.
How and why to monitor staff performance
You must discourage employees from picking items out of the waste flow for personal use - known as totting. Totting can be dangerous and reduces process efficiency, with workers missing recoverable materials.
One way to do this effectively is through a CCTV system in picking cabins and through in-vehicle tracking devices.
Managing health and safety risks effectively
A materials recovery facility can be a dangerous place to work due to:
- noise
- conveyors
- dust
- dirt
- hazardous materials
- vehicle movements
- heavy machinery
You should do as much as possible to reduce the risk of accidents and consider health and safety advice from outside the waste industry.
You can use these basic measures to reduce the risk of accident:
- never using personnel to pre-sort incoming waste on the tipping floor in front of mechanical grab
- implementing a one-way system for skip-trucks
- clear safety and warning signage translated into other languages when appropriate
- the availability of two-way radios in all vehicles and at all equipment locations
- segregated walkways
Your materials recovery facility should not be open to the public as this can increase the likelihood of accidents and obstruct vehicles.
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Using technology at your materials recovery facility
How to make sure that you use automation and technology efficiently at your materials recovery facility.
If you install the right equipment at a construction and demolition materials recovery facility it can play a crucial role in the operation.
The main advantage of automation is that it can significantly boost the sorting capacity and recovery rate of a materials recovery facility. This will save you labour costs and reduce the risks of accidents.
Because of the costs involved when buying, installing, upgrading or maintaining machinery, you should be confident of a rapid return from an investment in machinery such as:
- trommels - rotating cylinders set at an angle with holes of a fixed diameter to allow small matter to fall through and larger fraction to continue onto an onward conveyor belt
- vibratory screens - a series of tapered levels which are angled down which shake vigorously, simultaneously sieving out the fines and moving it down the slope
- disk screens and star screens - steel shafts to which spinning plastic stars or disks are fixed to grip large, light objects and carry them up the slope, with heavier items rolling down and smaller material falling through the screen
- magnets - to extract ferrous metal
- picking cabin equipment - with a conveyor belt passing through it of an appropriate width to allow efficient waste picking
- water separation equipment - a flotation tank for separating less dense materials from heavier aggregates
- air separation equipment - either sucking or blowing unwanted material away from the aggregate or soil
- shredders - powerful shredding machines to reduce the space taken up by recovered materials
Advanced materials recovery equipment
You can invest in additional advanced equipment such as a ballistic separator. A ballistic separator can be installed after a trommel to perform a sophisticated separation process, whereby:
- heavy material, such as brick or wood, is walked up a slope
- lighter material, such as paper, travels down the incline
- an optional screen deck to recover a third fraction of heavy fines
The heavy fraction may then pass on for handpicking, while the lighter material could then pass through an optical separator.
Equipment materials recovery maintenance
Constant care of materials recovery facility equipment and machinery will ensure effective operation on the production line. This can be done by on-site engineers who perform tasks such as cleaning and maintaining equipment during downtime and responding immediately to mechanical failure.
You should also implement planned and preventative maintenance schedules and discipline staff who fail to take proper care of the equipment.
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Producing high quality recovered waste materials
The operational measures you should use to ensure a high quality of output at materials recovery facilities.
When operating a materials recovery facility or waste management site, you should focus on producing high-quality, economically viable output materials.
This should enable you to increase the plant's overall efficiency, boost recovery rates and help to attract customers.
The importance of good waste recovery output
You should minimise the amount of output material sent to landfill. This will save money and attract new business from waste producers keen to limit their environmental impact. You will also need to sort the input stream into high-quality material outputs.
You should aim to build a reputation for consistent high quality outputs to maintain throughput. For example, ensure that the level of contaminants, such as painted or hazardous treated material in wood destined for energy recovery, does not exceed levels stipulated by the individual power plants.
You can prevent contamination by keeping your site tidy and free of waste materials on the floors and in skips and balers.
When demand is low, material reprocessors favour top-quality suppliers, so it is advisable to:
- regularly check quality at various stages of the process - for example by using digital photography
- provide a fully supervised audit trail for all material consignments
At the very least, you should note feedback from reprocessors on material quality and, when necessary, improve systems accordingly.
Flexibility in materials recovery
Because material prices fluctuate, your operations should be flexible, for example separate specific materials when prices rise and leave alone when prices fall. However, the rising price of landfill now means that most materials will eventually be worth recovering and recycling.
You should consider alternative transport links such as road, rail and canal when choosing a location for a new plant as it will offer flexibility in managing both inputs and outputs.
Care of output materials
You should bale output materials to make them easier to store and transport, unless you are asked not to by a buyer. Mill-sized bales are preferred by buyers as these can fetch higher prices.
To maintain quality and reduce the risk of contamination, theft and fire - including arson - you should store bales in dry, secure and, where possible, enclosed areas.
Because storage space costs are usually high, you should make sure that onward movement of material is done quickly, particularly as some recyclates will soon start to degrade.
You should regularly check bales for quality and even consider under-floor heating in storage bays to dry certain recyclates.
Energy recovery
It is unlikely that you can recover all materials without energy recovery through combustion as some material may be too awkward to recover, due to factors such as contamination or size.
You can apply for permission for your materials recovery facility to have its own energy from waste equipment, such as gasification and combined heat and power plant - see burning waste.
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