WT Skip Hire

A Revolution In Scrapping Cars

Posted on: 21/10/2014

At WT Skip Hire we always support and encourage schemes, technologies and ideas that promote recycling and safe, clean disposal of waste. Recycling and reducing waste is a huge challenge for all modern economies and is something that we are all actively encouraged to pursue in our day to day lives. A newly developed technology hopes to reduce the waste caused by one type of disposal in-particular that can sometimes get forgotten - car scrappage. What is the new technology? Developed by Chinook, there is a new technology available that seeks to improve the recovery of materials and energy from car scrappage plants. They have recently worked with European Metals Recycling (EMR), Britain's largest recycling company, to improve a plant in Oldbury, West Midlands so that it is capable of achieving recycling and recovery rates of at least 99%, making it the most efficient scrappage plant of its kind. Why do we need this new technology? According to statistics from 2012, the latest annual figures, Britain generated 85m tonnes of waste, 21m of which ended up in landfill sites. This shows that while a lot of material is being recycled or reused that we need to try and do more to cut this number down as much as possible. Within that, 13m tonnes of steel, aluminium and other metal is recovered from cars, cans, cookers, fridges and other white goods. With this much metal being recovered, ensuring we can save as much of it as possible from each disposed item is essential for making the process efficient. The British Metal and Recycling Association is also calling for a higher percentage of metal to be recycled from cars. In 2006 their target was 85% but this will soon be rising to 95%, making the need for this technology even greater. How does the technology work? A car is not just a metal box that transports people from point A to point B, there are seats, seatbelts, and other fixtures and fittings. These fittings can be stripped out of the car before they are scrapped but in most cases they aren't as there is no efficient way to remove them and even when they have been they are sent to landfill anyway - this also renders some of the metal unrecoverable. To get around this problem, Chinook's new technology acts as waste gasification, turning the scrapping process into an industrial-scale pressure cooker that converts organic material such as wood, foam and carpet into gas. This strips out the car creating clean, recyclable metal and allows the gas to be siphoned off to power steam turbines and generate clean electricity. This process will allow for 99% recovery of materials with the leftover 1% containing ash and glass shards. Our waste management At WT, we make sure to recycling as much of the waste that we collect in our skips as possible. Of all the waste that is taken to our recycling centre we are able to recycle almost 90% of the contents, from varying materials such as wood, plastic, metal and textiles. We are committed to being as environmentally friendly as possible and encourage everyone who uses our services to do the same. Disposing of waste in the most efficient way is something that we all need to do, both businesses and consumers. For any waste disposal needs that you may have be sure to contact us WT Skip Hire on 01493 668118 or e-mail us at info@wtskiphire.co.uk. Waste Management