TOPPS TILES

Situation

Topps Tiles are the major force in the UK for the supply of tiles direct to the public. As the amount of their retail shops have grown, Topps Tiles decided that they needed a new hub in the centre of the country. In 2003 they finally completed a huge new warehouse in Leicester.

To install “best value” systems for all their waste they called on Landfill Alternatives.

Their waste mainly consisted of wooden crates, broken tiles and thick plastic film. In addition they had office waste, sweepings off the floor and general black bag waste. The solution was to separate out the wood, plastic, and tiles and have this recycled to specialist reprocessors while compacting all remaining waste to landfill.

Landfill Alternatives installed a Jumbo Roll Packer to crush up the pallets and crates. This chews up the wood to small pieces which is then compacted. It allows payloads between 8 and 10 tons in the open top container. This is then collected twice a week and sent to a repressor to convert it back to chipboard. The plastic is segregated using coloured bins at the picking area and then thrown into a LFA 151 baler. This creates bales of 120kg which are then sold to a plastics repressor.

Tiles are thrown into a low height hook lift skip which is taken for road infill. All remaining waste is thrown into a ram compactor which is emptied once a fortnight.