Tata Global Beverage’s Eaglescliffe factory in Teeside, home to the Tetley brand, installed a waste compactor to process a mixture of waste tea bags, cardboard cartons, corrugated cardboard and plastic film.
Since installing the compactor, the company has cut the number of skip collections required from once a week to once or twice a month.
Tata’s manufacturing engineer, Mike Peacock, said: “Our housekeeping has also improved significantly because the mobile compactor is enclosed, whereas a standard waste skip is totally open.
“Waste materials – especially tea dust and light cardboard packaging – used to get blown out of the skip, creating cleanliness and housekeeping issues.”
He added: “We were reorganising our production facilities and, because we knew we would not get contamination into the production process with a self-contained compactor unit, we were able to remove the walls surrounding the compactor which was really helpful to us.”
The compactor was supplied by local firm Greenbank.
Maxine Perella