In 2017, the European Union set ambitious plastic packaging recycling goals: 50 per cent of plastic packaging by 2025 and 55 per cent by 2030.
Whether these targets are achievable is a debate for another day. Nonetheless, companies across many sectors followed suit with their recycling commitments.
If you’re one of those companies, you might be struggling with how to keep your recycling efforts organised and low cost.
An efficient recycling baler reduces labour and transportations expenditures. It saves you storage space and even encourages more recycling.
Read on for some of the not-so-well-known benefits of commercial balers for every organisation: from hospitals and schools to restaurants and retailers.
You’re in Control
Are you wondering what’s one of the most overlooked benefits of purchasing an on-site baler? It’s the fact that you have complete control over your company’s recycling process.
By baling recycling or other waste materials, you can accurately weigh, count, and measure bales. This gives you a picture of how efficient your recycling is. When everything is loose, you can only estimate what you’re getting rid of.
The precise data you collect from the bales can also feed into waste and recycling reduction programs.
You can use it to inform strategies to reduce production. Then you can measure the efficacy of those programs over the long term. This will help you meet your organisation’s waste management targets.
Balers today are equipped with sophisticated control systems. The set-and-forget operation means workers simply select the grade of material. The machine works out the required parameters.
Fast Turnaround on Your Investment
Think of how tightly compressed a machine-rolled hay bale is. That’s precisely what a baler can do for your recycling, scrap, or waste materials. But how can that save me money, you might be asking?
The compact cubes churned out by a plastic recycling baler are far more valuable than loose material.
You’ll save time and money on:
- Workforce hiring
- Storage space
- Pick-up
- Transportation
Recycling companies favour baled material because it’s easy to ship, warehouse, and sort. They will pay you for clean, well-bundled cardboard, fabric, plastic, and scrap metal.
Not only that, but a modern baler is undeniably more affordable than a hefty waste compactor.
And because you’re sending less material to the landfill, you can ditch the waste hauling and landfill tax expenses.
With baling, you’re also far more likely to comply with your region or country’s specific recyclable handling regulations.
Businesses can start to see a return on investment in as little as a few months to a year after purchasing a baler or enhancing their existing machinery with the latest baler accessories.
Environmentally Friendly
Waste management is fast becoming an area of concern for corporations at every level. Companies are on the lookout for the best ways to add recycling to their corporate responsibility guidelines.
Everyone from customers to inspectors want to know how you’re handling your waste. If you can prove that it’s responsibly managed, you can avoid the dreaded greenwashing label.
By using commercial balers, you’re ensuring the recyclables you produce are actually going to be recycled.
For one thing, you wouldn’t be baling recyclable material if you didn’t have a recycling partner ready to receive it.
And because baled materials are more compact than loose, you need fewer pick-ups–conserving fuel and reducing carbon pollution.
Visible balers also have a peripheral effect on a company’s recycling rates, primarily when situated in full view.
Saves Time and Space
If your retail outlet, factory, or supermarket is loading more than one skip bin a week or spending money on storing waste, then a baler is a must-have time and space-saving item.
Commercial recycling balers compress everything from colossal cardboard boxes to tub-loads of plastic containers without any additional preparation work.
Employees simply dump the recyclables in and hit go–and tying a bale takes just a few minutes.
Because the resulting bundles are tightly packed, they’re easy to store or stack in a warehouse or truck.
For example, this scrap metal baler produces bales of food, beverage, paint, or aerosol spray cans and tins into a dense bale just 40 x 40 x (10 to 30) cm square. The bales can be processed by a foundry immediately.
Cleaner and Tidier
The bales produced by a recycling baler look far neater than bagged materials or those lying loose in large bins.
In fact, loose piles of recyclables can be rejected as contaminated due to a greater chance of exposure to pests, spills, smells, and dust.
And once you’ve created a compact bale of a single material, say, plastic bottles, you never again have to worry about bits of cardboard or aluminium cans getting mixed in.
Baled recyclables are more likely to be recycled instead of being relegated to the landfill or incinerator.
Perhaps less obvious is that neat, clean bales reduce trip hazards, pose less fire risk when in storage, allow for better sanitation management, and help corporations present a cleaner, more environmentally friendly image to visitors.
Choose a Recycling Baler for Your Company
Before you go ahead and ditch that skip or waste collection service, take some time to evaluate your business’ recycling needs. Where and what type of recyclables do you produce? And in what quantities?
There are also some core considerations every company should make when choosing the best recycling baler for their needs: the staff needed to operate the machinery, what kinds of materials you need to bale, how long you need the baler for, and what quantity of material you will process on a weekly or monthly basis.
If you’ve completed your research and are ready to purchase a commercial baler, reach out to an ANIS dealer near you today.
