Martogg LCM

Reducing waste to landfill and reaping the rewards

Date Released: 27 OCT 2006

Life Cycle Management principles and practices begin at home, as far as the Martogg Group of Companies is concerned.

Earlier this year Martogg Group's manufacturing facility embarked on a waste identification and reduction study, the results of which opened the organisation's eyes to the opportunity to significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste leaving their site to landfill.

Subsequently, Martogg Group implemented a number of internal waste management initiatives that resulted in the development of added value recycled polymer materials, made from these waste streams utilizing the company's Martogg LCM® facility, as featured in the October 2006 edition of PNI.

Having identified materials packaging as a major internal plastic waste stream, the company calculates that over 100 tonnes per year of waste plastic (primarily PE bags and drum liners) previously destined for landfill, is now being collected and recycled for commercial use into applications such as builders' film, slip sheets and as feedstocks for proprietary polymer compounds.

The company also recognised its compounding production purge as a significant waste source, and successfully implemented a colour coded purge collection system that enables the efficient and effective separation of the many different polymer types the company utilises, for subsequent LCM® reprocessing. Martogg Group estimates that this initiative alone will save an additional 70 tonnes per year of purge waste from being sent to landfill.

With an estimated 170 tonnes per year of waste no longer going to landfill, but instead being used productively to make commercially viable second life materials, both the company and the environment are beginning to reap the rewards of Life Cycle Management in practice.