Green for Micro Project
Circular Economy in the Waste industry – Robowash are Climate Leaders
Robowash Limited is a true circular economy business. This unique business collects, recycles, repairs, and upcycles used refuse bins from the UK for sale here in Ireland.
In the UK there are over 27 million households, each of these with 1 – 3 refuse bins. Over the past number of years many councils have attempted to optimize their refuse systems through reducing the size of the bins, aiming to reduce waste production, free up valuable space on trucks and reduce the amount of pavement space used by the bins.
However, this optimization creates an additional problem – waste bins! Robowash has developed a system of gathering these waste bins, which would otherwise cost the councils fees in disposal and recycling and restoring them to their former glory.
Their system uses a number of specialized equipment such as robotic grading and washing systems, mobile grinders for unusable bins, and bespoke print and molding tools. No part of the bin is wasted, wheels are dismantled, repaired, and reused wherever possible, lids where damaged are ground down and re-molded to create new lids, damaged bins are ground down and used in the manufacture of new bins or products.
The objectives of this assignment was to quantify the carbon footprint of the business and identify opportunities to take Climate Action, reduce costs and improve the environmental sustainability of the business. We also quantified the carbon benefits of this circular economy business.
The primary energy source used by the business is diesel for its fleet of trucks that travel over long distances with heavy loads. There are few viable alternatives to provide cost and carbon reductions for HGVs currently. There is a new facility being developed by Robowash and plans are not fully developed for the facility which provides difficulty in specifications of equipment.
A number of solutions were presented including:
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