Recycling and the ocean of possibility...
Senator have set two recycling centres to tackle sustainability issues; Recycling-1 deals with waste stream management and Recycling-2 is where we recycle furniture.
Recycling-1 – Waste Stream Management
Recycling-1 processes all our internal waste through a number of waste stream management channels. All recyclable production waste and packaging is sent to and processed by Recycling-1 on a daily basis.
There are 3 balers at Recycling 1 who process cardboard, paper, plastic, polystyrene, fabric and foam on a daily basis. Once all internal waste was recycled we rolled out the scheme to our installations teams, who would bring back all packaging from jobs.
After we were recycling all packaging that we dealt with then we started offering this service to our customers and suppliers, where they return all their packaging in pre-paid white recycling bags. Today over 40 different companies use Recycling 1 to recycle their packaging waste.
Recycling 1 is based on the Huncoat Business Park, just down the road from our Seating factory.
Recycling-2 – Furniture Reprocessing
Recycling-2 deals with our furniture recycling operation. In 2007 Senator started offering a furniture recycling service to its customers. Furniture is brought back to Recycling 2 on returning delivery vehicles and then stripped down to its constituent parts and these materials and then entered into our 37 waste streams.
This is a new venture to increase the Sustainability Service we can offer all our customers, and Senator believes it is leading the way in the industry in terms of furniture recycling. They are currently around 2,000 items of used furniture recycled per month, and this number is increasing all the time.
It is estimated that 150,000 tonnes of "chipboard-type" office furniture is sent to landfill each year. This is a costly waste of a potential Bio-mass fuel, which we hope to use to generate electricity in 2010. By "hogging" all the waste.