UPWOOD CLEANING & HYGIENE PIONEERS HYGIENE DISPENSER RECYCLING INITIATIVE
Recycling end-of-life plastic waste has never been more important in the history of the planet, and the facilities sector is no different with it’s duty to dispose of plastics in a way that diminishes harm to the environment.
The Dis-Cycle™ initiative pioneered by Upwood Cleaning & Hygiene is an in-house scheme designed to enable the recycling of old, end-of-life hygiene dispenser systems and re-use their plastic foundations to manufacture new products.
How does the process work?
While new hygiene dispenser systems are being installed at the client’s facility, Upwood collect the old, dismantled dispensers and transport them to their proprietary recycling centre where the disused hygiene dispensers are “shredded” into fibrous granules and reused to manufacture new products.
Kirsty Powell, Sales Director of Upwood Cleaning & Hygiene is immensely proud of this initiative, “We are fully committed to working in partnership with our customers to reduce, reuse, recycle and cut waste. Sustainability is high on the agenda in every organisation, as a supply chain partner of choice, we have a responsibility to support our customers to meet their environmental and legislative obligations, by offering added value services that go beyond just selling eco-friendly cleaning products”.
The in-house dedicated recycling facility in the East Midlands uses waste plastic as the core component for manufacturing new products by a thermoset compression moulding process. The fibrous plastic granules are heated into a viscous material before being set by a mould on a hydraulic press, forming a new product, ready-for-market. The manufactured products at the facility include feet and weighted ballast for fence systems to name but a few.
Why is dispenser recycling important?
We’re all well versed on the global and national plastic problem, with an estimated 17% of waste plastic being sent to landfill according to The British Plastics Federation and an estimated 46% being incinerated*; a major source of air pollution. The importance of recycling schemes for plastic waste at end-of-life has never been greater and those responsible for business premises have a duty to ensure that plastics are disposed of in the most environmentally responsible way, plastic hygiene dispenser systems are no exception, which is where the Dis-Cycle™ scheme from Upwood comes in.
What dispensers can be recycled?
The recycling scheme works for all hygiene dispenser systems where plastic is the primary material including bulk fill soap dispensers, paper product dispensers, cartridge system dispensers and more. Any residual metal within the dispensers are separated by powerful magnets during the process and eventually melted to ensure maximum integrity of the final product.
About Upwood Cleaning & Hygiene
Upwood Cleaning & Hygiene are a distributor of cleaning, hygiene and janitorial products with a special focus on environmental initiatives and supporting their clients to hit their sustainability targets by helping to mitigate the harmful environmental impact of plastic waste as well as reducing carbon footprint through their Madagascan mangrove planting scheme, planting trees that remove up to 300kg of carbon from the atmosphere over their lifetime**.
Prospective clients interested the Dis-Cycle™ scheme should contact Upwood Cleaning & Hygiene on 01223 789 990 or sales@upwoodch.com to discuss the opportunity to replace their end-of-life hygiene dispensers with minimal environmental impact.
