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Back to where it all started for the RPU – it seems crazy that we only launched the RPU at the Green Man Festival 2023. So much has happened since, we were sure it must have been more than a year!
This year was a big one for Green Man – following the introduction of the new workplace recycling laws in Wales earlier this year, it was vital that we separated recyclables into several different streams so it could be managed efficiently.

We introduced a new recycling point and signage system and a conveyor-fed picking line, as well as our machines to compact and bale the resultant materials. We also brought in Swansea University’s Applied Research for Circular Solutions (ARCS) team, to test various designs of recycling points to determine how best to improve recycling rates at large events.

The very nature of these large events makes it tricky to meet the Waste Separation Requirements (Wales) – as so much is dependent on the attitudes of the individual festival goers across the site. However, we managed it, and the feedback from Natural Resources Wales (NRW) has been that they were ‘extremely impressed’.

A Greener Future (AGF), the industry experts in events sustainability, were also onsite at Green Man and took a close look at our behind-the-scenes waste handling operation.

Green Man has since been shortlisted for a UK Greener Festival Award which we’re delighted about!

What a fantastic experience we’ve had baling recyclables at Boomtown Fair this year!
Working alongside the brilliant Ryan’s Cleaning, we were busy throughout the festival separating out card, cans, plastic and glass to be crushed and baled ready for recycling. Using the Recovery Line for all the waste, the team were able to check and separate all the materials as they went along, ensuing that our bales were 100% clean before being sent to the recycling facility. This ensures we’re maximising potential recycling rates.

It was great to see lots of cans coming through from Drip Water – canned water is a huge improvement on bottled: cans are infinitely, and quickly, recyclable. Chances are, by the time you’re reading this, the metal we processed at Boomtown Fair has already been recycled, reformed into new cans and is already back on the shelves, or even in your hand already…

Photos –
Those 8 bales hold 230,000 drinks cans.
We had several bales of gold Drip drinks cans – canned water instead of bottled!
Cardboard bales neatly, safely stacked in the skip ready for removal.

Latitude 2024 was a great experience for our team – though taking place in Henham Park in Suffolk, it’s almost as far from West Wales as we could get!

We were able to set up a full materials recovery centre, with conveyor-fed recovery line where the team picked out aluminium cans, card, paper, and plastics before feeding them into the RPU’s compacting machines to create dense bales of recyclables. The machinery was all powered by GeoPura’s zero-emission Hydrogen Power Units throughout – a great step to further reducing the carbon footprint of the festival!

The team from Every Can Counts were on site throughout the festival, working hard to encourage more people to separate out their drinks cans from other waste.

Our RPU spent several weeks at Hyde Park this summer, compacting and baling the festival waste before it left site, making it easier, cleaner and safer to store and much more efficient to transport – both financially and in terms of fuel usage.

We worked closely with the team at Ryan’s Waste to ensure we maximised the flow of clean materials coming through, to ensure we were taking as much out for recycling as possible.

It was a great start to the summer for us, processing lots of cardboard, glass, and drinks cans from festival goers!

We spent last week at the The Showman’s Show and we’re pretty sure we can say it was a success! Thanks to everyone that braved the rain to come and see us, it was great to meet so many other recycling enthusiasts and ‘waste geeks’ 😆
A major part of the Show was the Vision: 2025 Sustainable Event Summit, a an important opportunity to bring event organisers, suppliers, climate organisations and green leaders together to share innovations and discuss best practice.

The Showman’s Show and Vision: 2025’s Green Supplier and Innovation Supplier Award recognises the sustainable solutions and positive changes exhibitors are making to their businesses, products and services, it’s a popular part of the show with visitors and exhibitors alike. We were excited to be Shortlisted for the Award, and following a presentation, Q&A, discussion by expert panel and public vote, we were even more excited to win!

Our pitch was based on our newly developed Recycling Processing Unit (RPU) – a self-contained unit the size of a shipping container. Rather than relying on external suppliers to process the recycling, event organisers can be in complete control. Soft launched at Green Man festival this year it was an outright success, processing 4 tonnes of cardboard, 3 skips full of glass bottles and 0.8 tonnes of aluminium drinks cans.

More information here

Well we’re back from the Green Man with our RPU Large Events Unit – what a successful week!

By the end of the festival clean-up, we’d processed 4 tonnes of cardboard, 3/4 tonne of drinks cans, and over 30 wheelie bins full of glass!

What’s the benefit?
Crushed glass takes up around 20% of the volume of intact bottles. We saw 2.5 skiploads of glass bottles crushed down into less than half a skipload of cullet – a completely reusable material.

We processed 36m³ of aluminium drinks cans, which equates to 30 pallets, or a full artic lorry load. These were crushed and stacked into just 3m³ of materials to take up just 2.5 pallets.

4 Tonnes of cardboard – that’s over 190m³ of loose cardboard – into just 34 tied, stackable bales taking up a fraction of the space.

In layman’s terms, we turned:
3 skips of glass into 1
1x artic lorry load of cans into 1x 3.5T van
3x artic lorry loads of cardboard into 1x 18T van.

In total, that means that the recyclable waste leaving the Green Man Festival used less than a third of the CO₂ compared to taking the waste loose and uncompacted!

Alchimica, the leading manufacturer of polyurethane liquid waterproofing membranes and PU Sealant technologies for the construction industry, have been using a WBM baling machine in their warehouse for some time now.

Previously struggling with oversized piles of packaging swamping the warehouse, WBM were happy to quote and supply for a compactor and baler that would deal with both plastic and cardboard.

As Joel puts it “The plastic crusher has been an absolute lifesaver in the warehouse. We were swamped by plastic film before and now its a non-issue.”

If you’d like to get control of your waste packaging, give us a call today!