As part of voestalpine Metsec plc’s Waste minimisation and sustainability programme waste to landfill was highlighted as an area where significant improvements could be made. voestalpine Metsec plc have worked closely with Weir Waste Services, through MWR, and as of October 2015 zero waste is being sent to landfill. All general waste is treated trough the MFT facility at Weir to extract the recyclable materials. Any waste residue left after this is processed for thermal use via SRF or RDF.
At the start of the programme, in 2007, 120 skips were sent to landfill in 1 year. By using the waste hierarchy of “Prevent, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recovery and Disposal” Metsec was able to focus on waste. Through internal promotional campaigns on preventing waste, reusing products, recycling of paper, wood, cardboard, recovering energy through segregating items for incineration and finally disposing of what’s left Metsec were able to dramatically reduce the number of skips from 120 to just 12. This process is on-going through discussions with suppliers to reuse packaging, investing in products such as PPE and lighting which have longer life spans we have further reduced waste. Now Metsec has a more robust format to measure waste, the result being from 2009-10 we disposed of 38 tonnes to landfill by 2014-15 this has reduced to 36 tonnes, and between 2015 to 2019 there has been zero to landfill.
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