As part of the company’s ongoing commitment to drive the efficiency and sustainability of its PVC-U recycling service, VEKA Recycling has opened a Northern consolidation hub, whilst also introducing IGU collection through a pilot scheme.
Based in Burnley, Lancashire, the VEKA Recycling hub will consolidate material collected throughout the north of England and Scotland, resulting in full loads that will then be transported on to the company’s Wellingborough headquarters for processing. Material including old PVC-U windows as well as virgin offcuts from frame fabricators producing windows and doors manufactured from a variety of systems, will be collected and sorted at Burnley, before being moved on in bulk by VEKA Recycling’s fleet of vehicles. This will further improve the logistical substantiality of the process, which for VEKA Recycling is already impressive due to the central UK location of its processing plant.
The hub will also facilitate the collection and drop-off of material using smaller vehicles in the Burnley and surrounding areas, providing a convenient and inexpensive way of disposing of old frames for local installers.
In a further initiative designed to improve the ease by which installers may present old frames for recycling, VEKA Recycling will also be introducing a pilot scheme to collect old IGUs with the frames, a move that is expected to significantly boost the number of frames returned for processing. The cullet will then be returned to a glass manufacturing partner to be made into new flat glass, which uses around 30% of recycled material in its manufacture. The scheme will be customised to customers’ needs, thus further simplifying the process of returning material for recycling.
Commenting on the initiatives, managing director of VEKA Recycling Ltd Stuart Stockley said: “VEKA Recycling processes everything collected in the UK at its Midlands processing plant, the most advanced in Europe. In itself this is more efficient than many other recyclers because it reduces the miles driven to return the old frames to the point of recycling. Plus the complex process of turning the old frames into new polymer is completed within the same facility. Often, the material is processed in a number of stages, at different plants. We do everything in house.
“The return of old insulated glass units as part of the disposal process is a big step forward to take hassle away from our customer simplify the return of material,” added Stuart.
“The recycling of old PVC-U window and door frames has long been established – VEKA built the first plant for the purpose as far back as 1993,” he explained. “But whilst we are experts in the processing of PVC-U, today there is far greater emphasis on holistic sustainability. These initiatives further address that requirement.”
