The O2 Arena which hosts concerts from the world’s top stars and elite sporting events continues its investment into its sustainability in partnership with Bywaters Waste Management.
Bywaters who are based locally to the O2 at Lea Riverside, first met Compact & Bale at the London Excel Facilities Show in 2017, where the firm’s equipment, innovations and solutions were on display.
In recent years Bywaters have introduced numerous innovations to the O2 in partnership with the Centre management and and were tasked with reducing the labour requirement from loading the existing vertical balers on site.
The service team were using 2 x vertical mill size balers which with the persistent drive to improve recycling rates were preventing them from clearing material quickly, resulting in a backlog at peak times and a requirement for additional labour to load. The particular issue was as a result of the opening & closing of the feed chamber doors (as seen in the photo below with one open and one closed), chamber size, cycle time and controls to operate the machine, which meant the operatives would need to be based by the baler feeding a reduced throughput throughout the day; whilst standing and waiting for cycles to complete before they could continue loading the next allowance of material. This meant operatives were unable to leave the area and would have to be dedicated to this function.
The previous mill size machines weren’t necessarily the wrong choice, as they were fit for purpose, however with the continued improvements to segregation the choice and balance between priorities meant that the client preferred the entire service team to be front of house focusing on maintaining the venue & supporting visitors, rather than back of house processing cardboard.
The chosen solution to overcome the above constraints was Compact & Bale’s CB44 semi-automatic/horizontal baler with photo cell and hopper. The solution now allows for significantly greater amounts of material to be loaded in to the machine, whilst the photocell will automatically run the cycle as the chamber fills, allowing for material to be continually loaded quickly and efficiently without having to wait for said cycle to complete before being able to continue loading. When you take significant accountability for your operation and sustainability as the O2 and Bywaters have shown, the outcome is vastly improved recycling rates, reduce general waste tonnages and huge quantities of recyclable commodities and in this case, being cardboard.
This model can also be fitted with an 1100 litre bin tipper to further reduce labour requirements but with current challenges facing the recycled cardboard market it is not yet deployed. When considering the use of a bin tipper, best practice is to assess the risk and potential for contamination to be baled alongside the cardboard.
As widely reported in the media over the last year, readers may have seen the issue of waste being exported alongside recyclable material/commodities, this is effectively the potential outcome if you don’t control segregation and recycle (and bale) correctly at source. In this instance then the venue and waste company have opted for the best possible scenario due to the number of collection points around the venue and subsequent risk of contamination entering the recycling scheme (for example in the base of a bin) which wouldn’t be seen prior to tipping.
The result is the best possible outcome for the venue, its sustainability, waste management partner and subsequently its visitors. All confident in the knowledge its positive actions and leadership have resulted in reducing costs, increasing revenues and continued improvement to its environmental sustainability.
If you would like more information on our solutions please email James@compactandbale.com
