6 services found
Shanks Waste Management services
Aluminium Recycling Services
It’s the 3rd most abundant element on Earth and the most abundant metal. It is particularly difficult to extract from its ore – bauxite – due to its relatively high reactivity and high melting point. Hence it is one of the most energy intensive metals to produce from its raw ore – a reason why production plants are often located close to electricity plants, typically hydro or nuclear. Average energy consumption for Al production is approx. 15 kW hours (kWh) per 1 kg of Aluminium produced. Electricity costs represent between 20-40% of the costs of producing Al. The full process of creating virgin Al stock is responsible for about 1% of global human-induced GHG emissions
Glass Recycling Services
Glass makes up a large component of household and industrial waste due to its weight and density. Annually, total glass use in the UK is estimated at around 3.6 million tonnes.An efficient furnace will require 4 GJ of energy for each tonne of glass melted. Milk bottles are reused an average of 12 times.On average every family uses about 330 glass bottles and jars a year.
Paper & Card Recycling Services
The paper fraction is one of the most important materials in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) sector, comprising 20-25% of municipal waste generated in EU (the UK doesn’t report on these figures).Paper is biodegradable, hence the main greenhouse gas to be created from its decomposition in a landfill site is methane, a GHG with a warming potential over 20 times higher than carbon dioxide (but with a much shorter atmospheric lifetime, 10 years versus 100 yrs for CO2).One of the key benefits for paper recycling is the diversion of paper waste from either landfill or incineration and the avoidance of methane and/or carbon dioxide as a consequence.
Plastic Recycling Services
High density polyethylene (HDPE), low density polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) represent 86% of all plastic packaging (APME, 2001).Due to their important volumes in MSW and recyclability, PE/PP and PET are the main focus of specific collection and recycling programmes.When placed in landfill, plastics have a degradation timescale of 100s of years. This affects the results of some life cycle assessments of alternative ‘end-of-life’ routes for plastics, as LCAs typically take a 100 year life span as their benchmark. In this time, plastics will not degrade to any significant extent; hence it can appear that landfill is a preferable option from a GHG emissions point of view compared to incineration.This, of course, is erroneous over the longer term. In Western Europe around 4-6% of oil and gas are used to make plastics. 80% is used as an energy source
Steel Recycling Services
Steel is the most recycled metal in the UK - and the world. Steel is the only common metal that will stick to a magnet. It is difficult to find a precise number for the amount of energy needed to produce a tonne of steel, but many estimates point to the fact that it takes approximately 15000 kWhs of energy to produce a tonne of virgin steel from raw materials.
Wood Recycling Services
A study in 2009 showed that producing particleboard out of recycled wood resulted in a 77% energy saving compared with making it from virgin wood.A 2000 study by the US EPA shows that recycling is a more energy intensive option to incineration, whilst incineration gets an energy credit. As a result, incineration presents an advantage over both recycling and landfill (an advantage of over 150%) from this perspective.
