Tharsus engineering is introducing an innovatory glass crushing unit, for the commercial recycling of glass in a new five year contract win with Ekko Glass Crush and Collect.

The engineering firm has partnered with the Scottish-based recycling experts to design and manufacture their own brand of glass crushing compacting units for use in “hospitality” trade businesses like restaurants, bars, clubs and other licenced traders.

The company in question, Ekko Glass Crush and Collect informs the Waster that they been piloting the unit with 100 customers that sell consumer glass in large quantities including Network Rail and FTSE 250 bar and restaurant chain, Mitchells and Butlers.

The built-to-last space saving units are reportedly smaller than a wheelie bin and reduce glass waste volume by 80% resulting in much smaller storage space requirements between collections.

Tharsus chief executive Brian Palmer said: “Ekko Glass Crush and Collect has an excellent business model, which supports the growing need for economically viable methods of recycling waste”.

“Working closely with the team at Ekko, we were asked to redesign the product to optimise [it] throughout and satisfy international safety standards, while still meeting their commercial and technical specifications.”

Tharsus apparently completely changed the human interface, to make the glass crushing action safer for users, completely removing the possibility of them coming into contact with glass shards and enhanced the ergonomics and aesthetics by adding a practical curved top to the machine.

Glass Crushing Units Designed for Safety

He continued: “In order to protect the operator we have redesigned the unit so that once the bottle is placed into the chute, the opening is closed off before the machine can crush the glass.”

When it is available by the end of this year, the new unit will make recycling more time and cost efficient, crushing all glass in one unit and reducing overall waste disposal costs for businesses.

Brian Williamson, director of Ekko Glass Crush and Collect said: “One of the main hurdles to glass being recovered from the hospitality sector is the lack of storage space available at the properties. It is presumed by the Waster that once the available space for glass waste storage is used, without crushing facilities the businesses would need to call in their glass collection service much more frequently, raising recycling costs.

Glass Crushing Units Behind the Bar

The company has stated that; “There is an increasing trend for ‘behind-the-bar’ in house compactors to be used to compact glass before collection which reduces the amount of space required to store the empty bottles and the frequency of collections required”.

Developments of this sort clearly allow glass to be collected much more sustainably, in larger tonnages per vehicle mile, and are very much to be encouraged. The engineering company in this instance has not mentioned the mixing of different glass colours which tends to make the cullet of lower value, but as currently the Waster understands that most UK glass cullet, whether colour separated or not, is being used as road sub-base aggregate etc., this hardly matters.

Other packaging materials suppliers should take note. Plastic containers and film, could surely be similarly densified/ compacted by these businesses, rendering recycling of these materials also much more viable for recycling by the hospitality trade?

For more information about glass crushing Tharsus and Ekko Glass Collect click here!