Its a Wrap

New baling and packaging plant is final piece of the jigsaw in our 3-year quest to achieve Zero-to-Landfill

In June 2011, the McGrath Group invested well over half a million pounds in new equipment and infrastructure for its Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) in Barking which enables waste residues to be compacted and packaged for waste-to-energy (WtE) re-processing.

The baler/wrapper plant are specifically designed for processing loose material such as waste residues that cannot be filtered into discrete material streams.

“The new equipment will enable us to close the final gap and recycle 100 per cent of the non-hazardous material we handle,” says McGrath’s Environmental Manager, Tim Megnin, “The pressing, tying and wrapping process also allows us to achieve maximum payloads on the roads and therefore minimise the carbon footprint of the transportation.”

Waste residues baled and wrapped using the new plant are transported to specialist WtE facilitators who use a variety of technologies to convert the material into energy such as Combined Heat & Power (CHP) and composting.

The McGrath Group adopted the target of achieving Zero-to-Landfill as a corporate objective in 2008 when its overall recycling rate was 90.3%. Since then it has introduced a number of initiatives and new technologies to close the gap such as:

• Joint venture with PDM to recycle mixed food waste
• Installed new timber and tyre recycling plant (with help of £600k grant from WRAP)
• Developed London’s first fully licensed purpose-built washing plant to de-contaminate soils

The McGrath Group is confident it will be able to formally announce Zero-to-Landfill has been achieved in October 2011.