First Nappy Recycling Plant Opens in the UK – and four more sites expected to open!

Knowaste, a Canadian Recycling Company, have opened up the UK’s FIRST disposable nappy recycling plant, and are expected to deal with 36’000 tonnes of waste a year. The company behind the UK’s first ever nappy recycling facility, which officially opened on September 12th, has also said it plans to open another four facilities nationwide.

Canadian company Knowaste are “actively discussing” opportunities in Scotland, London, Wales and the West, to follow the launch of its first plant – a 36,000 tonne-a-year capacity facility in West Bromwich. In total the firm plans to invest £25 million in the UK, with the money being raised from private investors.

The West Bromwich facility will treat disposable nappies and other absorbent hygiene products (AHPs) such as adult incontinence items and feminine hygiene items. Initially, this will all be sourced from commercial AHP waste operators, with services companies such as OCS/Cannon Hygiene, PHS All Clear and Initial Rentokill among those sending what Knowaste said were “long-term contracted tonnages” to the plant. The companies collect material from washrooms, hospitals, nursing facilities and child care nurseries.

These firms will pay a gate fee to use the facility, which a spokeswoman for Knowaste said was “competitive to current landfill costs including taxes”. She explained: “As landfill taxes continue to rise, Knowaste can help customers avoid these costs for this waste stream in the long term.”

The Knowaste process, which was pioneered in Canada, involves nappies and other AHPs being broken apart and sterilised in an autoclave, before being washed and then exposed to a chemical treatment which deactivates the absorbent polymers in the material.

Plastic materials are then removed and sent on for separate processing, where they are compressed into small pellets that can be sold on to reprocessors. The remaining parts of the AHP then enter a screening process that aims to capture any remaining traces of plastic and other organic material.

The remaining organic waste is then dried out and sent for energy generation. According to Knowaste, it treats 95% of all input material itself, with the remainder either being sent to landfill or sewer or, in the case of rejects from the process such as metals, recycled locally.

The Knowaste plant uses autoclave technology to sterilise and break apart nappies and other absorbent hygiene products.

While this West Bromwich plant is initially focused on commercial AHP, according to Knowaste the plant has the “flexibility” to take waste from the domestic stream and it has said it is already working on targeting this source of material.

The company’s chief executive, Roy Brown, said: “We are also developing partnerships with local authorities and their waste contractors to recycle domestic AHP waste in the future and our plant here in the Midlands and those intended for Scotland, the West and London will enable both commercial operators and local authorities to further cut carbon, increase recycling and divert waste from landfill.”

However, the spokeswoman added: “It takes time however to build domestic collections infrastructure and therefore local authorities looking at this waste stream will be an important part of our future development.”

 

Read the full article here: http://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/plastics/uk2019s-first-nappy-recycling-plant-opens and find out more about Knowaste by going to www.knowaste.com