Jersey Increases Recycling Capacity

St Helier Municipal Services in Jersey, Channel Islands, is increasing its recycling capacity and throughput for commercial and residential waste by upgrading its baling operation with a new horizontal baler and feed conveyor from Middleton Engineering.

This will increase flexibility to handle a wider range of waste streams and enable the team to produce compact mill size bales to drive transportation efficiencies, the municipality says.

St Helier Municipal Services is responsible for the collection and processing of card and packaging waste from 70 percent of the parish of St Helier’s commercial properties and residential recycling.

Jersey has a zero landfill policy. Any waste that is not recycled is incinerated at the Island’s energy-from-waste plant. The goal is to remove as much recyclable material as possible and these commodities are then baled and shipped off island for processing in France, the closest destination.

Transportation is the biggest expense and, in addition to improved throughput, a key requirement is to produce high quality compact bales, to ensure each container carries a maximum load, and at the same time satisfy St Helier’s French recycling partner and the reprocessing mills.

The new system is a Middleton ME80 closed-end, semi-automatic, horizontal baler with a bespoke feed conveyor. Where previously the team was only able to produce one bale per hour using a manually operated vertical baler, they are now achieving three in the same time and clearing the commodity as it comes in, the municipality says.