Rainclear’s improved ‘planet friendlier’ waste management processes

We’re pleased to be working in partnership with Swindon Metal Recycling to continually deliver improvements in how we reduce, reuse, and recycle our company waste and therefore reduce our impact on the planet and future generations.

Speaking to Tom our warehouse manager today about the changes he’s been making to make the most of our packaging waste, being more eco-friendly in our packaging procurement choices, recycling our scrap metal, and reducing our general waste collections and seeing to resultant pay off in increased rebates and reduced costs has been eye-opening and reassuring. He told me:

“Being more eco-friendly pays!

The improvements have been incremental every year, but this is now the best system we’ve ever had”

Tom Sprules – Operations Manager – Rainclear Systems

The changes we’ve made:

1. We upgraded our cardboard shredder (for the packaging boxes our products arrive into our warehouses in) to a larger one with a separate dust extractor  – due to the huge success of the old one in reducing our usage of the bought-in ‘void fill’ paper.
   And therefore much more of the packaging  that comes into us is now shredded and reused as filler in our fitting’s boxes (small and medium sized boxes).

“The old shredder took 5 years to die, but easily paid for itself – so when it broke down there was no question of not replacing it and getting an even bigger one!”

• Even so we can’t use the shreddier fast enough – so still have some waste cardboard (from incoming deliveries/materials). So we now lease a small baler from a company called MilTek which we use to not only bale the excess cardboard but any clean plastic waste  – which is now also saved and baled.

“We salvage what we can and store and recycle what we can’t”

1. We now work with a local company called Swindon Metal Recycling who deal with ALL our waste and recycling, by bailing more, we have reduced our general waste down to one skip emptied on an ad hoc basis rather than 3 wheelie bins on a fortnightly collection. (Which means fewer lorries on the road, making fewer journeys, burning less fossil fuel).
   They also collect all our scrap metal from damaged stock and damaged returns along with our new cardboard & plastic bales, which they recycle and as an added bonus pay us rebates (cardboard and clean plastic waste actually have a scrap value, just like you’d expect scrap metal to have).
2. There had been a slight glitch with the voidfill we purchase being switched back to virgin craft paper during lockdown, we couldn’t get the recycled paper version in the palette sized packs we needed, but the market has caught up with the demand for recycled paper, and we’ve now nearly completed a full packaging retender (as I was speaking to Tom 30/06/23) which will switch us back to our original recycled paper version – and we’re hoping to restore our coveted “Trees saved” certificate status as a result. (Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees)

“It 100% pays to recycle and to choose to buy recycled.
…10% saving switching from ‘craft’ (virgin) paper to recycled void-fill paper

The more shredding we use, the less (bought-in) void-fill we use …up to a 27% saving”

1. ALL of the consumables we use for packaging fall in line with the 30% recycled content guidelines for the plastic tax guidelines. We don’t use a lot  – mainly shrink wrap and bubble wrap – but only in VERY small quantities.  And any bubble wrap usage will also reduce as we are changing the way we pack our length boxes to swap the bubble out for paper void-fill (either purchased recycled paper or the shredded cardboard produced in-house).
2. We recycle the wood from broken palettes and ‘stillages’ (The wooden frames the lengths of pipe and gutter arrive packaged/delivered in). Stillages and palettes that are undamaged are reused to deliver our products on to our customers. But damaged ones need to be broken up and packed away into the sealed skip supplied by Swindon Metal recycling. We used to have an open-top version but fly tippers used to throw all sorts in, and the recycle companies couldn’t be expected to sort everything that then contaminated the  otherwise recyclable wood – so the whole skip would then become just ‘general waste’ and had to go to landfill as a consequence.

When we consulted our staff to come up with our Company Vision, Mission and Values, the majority were proud of and motivated by our sustainability aims. So it comes as no surprise that we would do our utmost to make our waste management practices sustainable and aim to move towards becoming regenerative.

“Are we healing the future or stealing from it?

We’ve all developed a greater consideration for the impact that our actions have on the health and well-being of those living after us. and on the natural living systems on which we all depend…

We now prioritise the use of sustainable materials and technology solutions…

…we can ensure that the actions we take today will not undermine the health and well-being of future generations…

…(by) continuing to learn and innovate.”

Source: The Echelon regenerative sustainability report – “From Surviving to Thriving”.
[https://fairsnape.substack.com/p/from-surviving-to-thriving– Accessed 26/06/23]

So it has been a pleasant surprise to Tom (and a bonus to our bottom line which pleased the MD and The Board) to find that:

• due to government schemes like the plastic tax  
  (Plastic packaging components containing 30% or more recycled plastic are not chargeable for the tax);
• being paid market rate rebates on the scrap value of the cardboard, clean plastic and metal;
• the demand for recycled paper bringing the cost of choosing to buy recycled instead of craft/virgin paper down;
• the EPR (Extended producer responsibility for packaging) regulations now putting the responsibility of waste being collected in the companies hands (Working with Swindon Metal Recycling we’re able to provide a PRN (packaging waste recycling note) to show the work we’ve done towards meeting our recycling obligations;

has actually made it MORE cost effective to reduce, reuse, and recycle our waste and therefore reduce our impact on the planet and future generations.

Come March 2024 Tom will have a full year’s worth of data (2023-24) so watch out for an update here then…!

As always, if you don’t find what you are looking for here on the website or have any questions, please call our friendly, knowledgeable team on 0800 644 44 26 or email [email protected]