At an event held at the plant yesterday (July 11), Telford council’s cabinet member for borough economy, Cllr Lee Carter, was invited to press the button to process the milestone unit.
The appliance then made its way through AO’s state-of-the-art fridge recycling machine, which opened last year.
AO says that the majority of these fridges are collected from customer homes when they have a new appliance delivered, and described it as “a huge step forward in helping to increase the number of fridges being correctly recycled in the UK.”
The 80-tonne shredding machine, built specially for AO, crushes fridges down to their constituent metals, plastics and insulation foam using heavy duty rotating steel chains which operate inside a sealed chamber. Materials are then separated and sorted, the whole process taking eight minutes.
Cllr Carter said: “As a borough we need to do all we can to help reduce our impact on the environment. There’s lots we as a council are planning to do and we need the whole community to join together with us.
“It’s fabulous to see a major national business based here in Telford leading the way in recycling and we’re delighted that AO are looking to do even more. We hope that together we can encourage many more business and residents to do even more to make the borough, its communities and businesses a more sustainable place.”
“It’s so important that these products are dealt with properly, to ensure that the gases and oils inside don’t leak into our environment so the fact that we’ve ensured that a million of them have ended up being processed efficiently and properly is great to see.”
This was echoed by Robert Sant, managing of AO Recycling, who said: “We’re thrilled to have reached this huge number here at AO Recycling.
“It’s so important that these products are dealt with properly, to ensure that the gases and oils inside don’t leak into our environment so the fact that we’ve ensured that a million of them have ended up being processed efficiently and properly is great to see.”
Plastics
Cllr Carter and other member of Telford council also toured the site of AO’s proposed WEEE plastics recycling plant (see letsrecycle.com story).
According to the company, the new four-acre site – due to open in the Autumn – will give AO the ability to clean and refine the plastic it collects from its main fridge recycling facility to a higher standard, meaning it can be processed for further reuse.
The visit came the day after the Environment Agency released its consultation over the environmental permit for the new plastics facility, which will have a 50,000 tonne a year capacity.
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