In the news this week was a huge fire involving 100,000 tonnes of plastic recycling material at the West Midlands Jayplas depot in Birmingham. The plant recycles most polymer types into granulate, refuse sacks and building films.
List of main polymer types recycled
- low density polyethylene (LDPE)
- linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE)
- high density polyethylene (HDPE)
- polypropylene (PP)
200 firefighters have been involved in containing the blaze of material stored outside in the yard. Smoke from the flames have been reported to reach 6,000ft and current BBC reports are citing an external fire source started the fire, perhaps a Chinese Lantern although don’t know how they would prove that.
What does Kavia Moulded Products do to prevent such an incident happening to them, in the first instance we don’t store any material, virgin or recycled outside. In fact we isolate our plastic for recycling in a separate building from the production building, additionally we have a bulkhead dividing the virgin material storage from the production area where the machines are running.
Kavia also encourages doing recycling programs with us to reduce the amount of bulk plastic at these recycling centres.
