Tarm Recycle Station - EPS

Compacting of EPS/airpop for recycling

Tarm recycle station compact the gathered EPS, also known as airpop, in the recycle station with a RUNI SK200Twin and sells the compacted EPS blocks for recycling.
Earlier the EPS was part of combustibles assorted, but now has to be separated. It has been quite a change for the citizens having to sort it and place it in a different place in the recycle station. But now, around a year later and a lot of focus on this matter, it is beginning to show the effect of greater quantities and both citizens and employees are happy about the machine and the fact that the materials are now recycled instead of burned.

Tarm recycle station is one of the smaller ones, and for that same reason the quantities of EPS are limited. The citizens are handing in their EPS in the designated room, and then, at some point of the day, an employee passes by and feeds the machine the gathered EPS. This way they assure that nothing but EPS enters the machine. It takes approx. 1 hour daily to sort, feed the machine and handle the compacted blocks.

Afterwards, the compacted blocks can be stacked in a pallet and sold to recycling. At Tarm recycle station they have blocks for approx. 14 pallets a year. This is around 6 tons a year. This is an income of around 4,000 EUR a year and furthermore is the saving of 10-15 truckloads of EPS that used to be transported to incineration, which is a saving of around another 4,000 EUR.

This means an ROI of approx. 3 years for the SK200Twin, for a recycle station with this amount of EPS.

It is not difficult and all of the employees think is it simple and a great idea. Sometimes there are doubts concerning the cleanness of the EPS, and whether the machine can handle this. In these cases a superior takes a look, but besides this the employees handle the machine without problems.
Dan Højberg says: “It is a brilliant machine for what we need. For the compaction of quantities like ours it has the perfect size and we have not have any problems with it, since we got it”

SK200 Screw Compactor for Compacting Post Consumer EPS in a container at a public recycling center