Retailers’ waste expenses are growing all the time, everything from waste transportation to tip fees is increasing.

Without the ability to differentiate waste streams, recyclers won’t be able to accept it and retailers will have to direct the majority of their waste to landfills.

“The inefficiencies will come out from their inability to differentiate between those streams and just bundle them all together, they’ll go straight into landfill… if they are simply bundling all their waste together into the one thing they are being extremely inefficient and costly,” Peter Jessup, Wastech Engineering’s product specialist, told Inside Retail.

Separating plastics, cardboard and metal from general waste efficiently is a retailer’s best chance of reducing costs and decreasing its carbon footprint.

“When we’re talking about dealing with waste and recycling waste, we need to ensure that we are maximising the compression placed over the waste to make it as possible for transport, balers and compactors enable you to do that,” Jessup said.

Balers versus compactors 

Wastech’s vertical balers will bale soft plastics and cardboard into a commodity that recyclers will happily put in their mills – with a sufficient volume of the baled commodity retailers could qualify for a rebate.

“Mills will come around and pick them up, often for free, but depending on volumes, they may even get a rebate back,” Jessup explained.

Whereas, Wastech compactors are used by large retailers including shopping centres, and supermarket outlets with high volumes of waste produced and needing to be put under compaction. 

“Compactors can compress anywhere from three to one to two to one, which means that all of a sudden retailers create a lot more waste in the same space,” Jessup said.

Moreover, Wastech’s compactors minimise manual handling which promotes greater efficiency in a busy environment like retail.

Over the last thirty years, Wastech has designed, manufactured, installed and serviced waste equipment around Australia. Wastech has thousands of balers in the marketplace, and thousands of compactors are already there. 

“We specialise in the compression of waste to make it more efficient for transport – that’s our fundamental reason for being,” Jessup stated.

A long-term strategy 

While waste production is not synonymous with environmental efforts, waste management is. Wastech’s compactors are designed to help retailers meet their sustainability goals.

“What retailers want to be able to do is to minimise the amount of waste going to landfill. That’s got to be a fundamental rule,” Jessup said.

“Retailers need to become more sophisticated in how they treat their waste and a little bit more sophisticated in how they streamline their waste streams so they can utilise compression equipment to get it to the recycles that need that raw material,” he continued.

From Jessup’s perspective, since waste is an ongoing concern for retailers they should partner with an experienced and hands-on waste management partner. 

“We’re on site every day of the week, every site is different and it’s incumbent upon us to be able to identify the opportunities for customers, to differentiate their waste streams, to ensure that we can provide them with the correct machinery to apply compression over that waste to minimise their transport costs,” he elaborated.

Typically mistakes are made through inexperienced consultants liaising with retailers, choosing the wrong solution that is inadequate for the size and volume of the waste or inversely, a solution that is unnecessarily large for the waste.

Wastetch’s analysis before prescribing a retailer a waste management solution analyses the waste stream type and the volume of the waste. Waste stream and waste volume are the two criteria that Wastech focuses on to ensure it supplies retailers with the correct solution.

“There are so many different solutions, especially in the compactor world, it’s incumbent upon us to understand the needs of the client and the opportunities that they have with their waste to ensure we prescribe the correct solution and compacted configuration,” Jessup explained.

Once a retailer has selected the solution that optimises their waste management best they should ensure they have access to around-the-clock service and support that understands urgency is vital.

“Our customer service area is headed up by a team of people that are answering the phones twenty-four seven, 365 days a year – if you break down on Christmas Day, we will come and fix it,” Jessup concluded.

“We provide regular servicing, just like a motor car for the ongoing life of the compactor unit.”

• To find out more about how Wastech Engineering can support retail businesses in optimising their waste disposal, recycling and resource recovery, visit here.