BPR Waste FAQ
How Does Energy From Waste Work?
Waste collection vehicles discharge their waste into the bunker.
Waste is loaded into the feed hopper. The waste then goes down the feed chute into the furnace.
Inside the furnace, a series of grate bars move waste through the furnace where it is dried and burned at temperatures of over 1000°C.
The bottom ash from the grate drops into a slag extractor where it is cooled with water. Steel is removed with magnets before the ash is sent for recycling.
Hot gases produced by the furnace travel through the boiler, boiling water to generate steam.
Electricity is generated by passing the steam through a turbine. Some electricity is used to power the plant and the rest is exported to the National Grid.
Exhaust steam exiting the turbine is cooled and condensed back into water, which is fed back into the process.
A comprehensive flue gas cleaning system cleans gases from the burnt waste. The modern plant complies with all the most stringent environmental legislation.
Why Source Separated Recycling?
Paper Round supports the Campaign for Real Recycling (www.realrecycling.org.uk). Recycling is only worthwhile if the material we collect can be made back into something worthwhile. This can only happen if the material is kept clean and usable:
- Office paper mixed with cardboard, plastics and glass can only be recycled back into low grade paper products, normally in China.
- Office paper collected by Paper Round is turned back into copier paper in France.
- Glass collected with paper is crushed and can only be used as a type of aggregate to make roads and the like. This saves no CO2 and it would be cheaper and better for the environment if you simply threw it away.
- Glass collected by Paper Round is made back into glass bottles in the UK.
Keep your recycling real – don't mix it up!
Up to 10% of material collected as mixed recycling is rejected at the sorting facility as rubbish and is sent to landfill.
Another 10% isn't sorted properly and ends up being sent off to the reprocessor who will throw it into landfill.
That means that 20% of mixed recycling, one bag in five, ends up as rubbish!
