These days UK businesses are constantly bombarded with legislation and advice with respect to the impact of their activities on the environment and the need to implement recycling initiatives. Common waste streams such as card, paper and plastic are often cited as those areas where business can most readily help with environmental issues. In fact, a lot of businesses are now required to recycle a certain percentage of those items to meet with the legislative requirements of local and National Government.
What the advisors and Government rarely tell you is the impact that the implementation of these reycling initiatives will have on your bottom line i.e. the costs involved. It is often left to the businesses themselves to 'crunch the numbers' and determine the best and most cost effective way of dealing with the issue. Sometimes this will involve seeking advice from proper waste consultants but, more commonly, advice is offerred or sought from sales reps of companies who's core business is selling balers and other such recycling machinery.
Yet again, these people don't or won't tell you about the financial impact their advice will have on your bottom line. To them the most important thing is to sell or rent you equipment on which they can earn a commission. Often, the equipment they will try to sell or rent to your business will be that which has the least impact on your pocket, but still yields high returns for the sales people. The piece of equipment that is most readily sold is the common vertical 'Baler'. Balers are presently in plentiful supply throughout the UK. They are relatively cheap to purchase, have few complicated parts and are virtually maintenance free. To top that off, the sales people will also tell you how you can actually make money from selling baled card and the like to paper and plastic merchants. They will even quote you prices of between £50 and £100 per tonne being paid for your card or plastic. This is pure fiction!
Granted, baled card and the like can earn your business an income, actually £20 - £30 per tonne in the present climate. For an average sized business producing 200 - 300 tonnes per year this can equate to quite a substantial amount of money. Sadly, however, a lot of businesses are 'blindsided' by this fact and they don't take into account the costs of labour associated with baling.
Recent studies have demonstrated that an average company producing 200 tonnes of card per year, operating a single 'mill size' vertical baler may well expect to expend upwards of 1000 man hours a year just flattening card for baling. Even at minimum wage this can equate to almost £15,000 per anum in wage costs alone. When you add the cost of the baler itself the operating costs and the use of a forklift and driver to transport the mill size bales for storage, this figure can soar to well over £25,000 per anum. So as you can see, the £7,500 earned from your baled card isn't that attractive after all.
In comparison, a small waste compactor such as an SP150 or CR140 will cost you only a third of the man hours e.g. £5000 per year and providing the card is segrated for compaction you can still earn approximately £15 per tonne for the compacted card. Even after the compactor rental and operating costs are taken into account, the overall cost of compacting your card as opposed to baling it falls to around £7,000 per year, a staggering £10,000 year cheaper than a baler.
If you would like us to visit you and carry out a specific, unbiased cost comparison for your business please call us. Remember, we can rent balers as well as compactors so it makes no difference to us what path you decide to follow.
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