Recycling plastics at saveBOARD

24 Feb

saveBOARD recycles soft plastics, drink cartons and blister packs into building products. A group of CPI members and friends visited their plant in Warragamba, around 90km from Wollongong.

The company’s operations manager, Mark Atkinson, talked us through the various steps in the process and the increasing range of end products.

The material inputs vary depending on which product they’re making. Describing this as the ‘recipe’ for each product, the specifications could include a mix of:

Household soft plastics from the Woolworths collection program
Drink cartons (gable top or silver lined) from Australian container deposit schemes
Pre-consumer packaging material, such as printed rolls of film that are obsolete or contain an error
Plastic and aluminium blister packs

The materials are shredded and mixed to create the right ‘recipe’ for each production run. The material is compressed and heated to create boards with different thicknesses and between 2.4 – 3m in length. The edges are trimmed and all trimmings are recycled back through the process. A very thin film can be moulded onto the top of the board to change its colour, e.g. for the green boards use in Woolworths supermarkets.

The manufactured boards can be used to replace plywood, MDF or particleboard in many different applications, such as hoardings, internal linings for industrial and commercial buildings or cabinetry. The benefits include >99% recycled content and a lower carbon footprint compared to alternative products.

Find out more here.