Rotecna News

WASTE MANAGEMENT IN ROTECNA

It is more responsible and economical to manufacture new products from recyclable materials.

All waste is deposited sorted in labeled clean points. Photo: Rotecna.

Separating waste may seem like a tedious task. Still, it is essential to give some materials a “second chance”, reduce the extraction of raw materials such as plastic, and save production costs. Rotecna has a waste management plan that describes what to do with each of them to do it correctly.

Polypropylene is the material with which more products are manufactured in Rotecna. Therefore, it is also the waste that is generated the most. In 2020 alone, some 5,923 tons were injected. 3% of this plastic could be reused after passing through the mill in the company. “After crushing the plastic, we put it in big bags, and we get a quality sample to analyse it and check that the properties of this material have not been altered. When we have verified the quality of this polypropylene, it is used again in our injection machines to manufacture new products”, explains Marta Nadal, head of the Quality and Environment Department of Rotecna.

Plastic is not the only waste generated from the company’s industrial activity. Aerosols, scrap, oils, batteries, or contaminated packaging are some of the other waste that needs to be appropriately recycled. Garbage can be separated according to whether it is industrial or light. On the one hand, industrial waste has two subcategories: hazardous waste (substances which, because of their chemical composition or characteristics, pose a danger to public health and the environment, so that they have to be managed separately), and non-hazardous waste (including paper and cardboard, wooden pallets). On the other hand, scrap, electrical cable or banal waste).

Rotecna operators must take them to one of the several “clean points” appointed in the company to separate the waste correctly. Each of them is identified with a label and a code.

As for industrial waste, Marta explains that “from quality control, we make continuous inventories, and when we see that we have a large quantity, we contact the corresponding manager to come to collect the waste”. Rotecna has contracts with several managers that establish how each waste

has to be dealt with, and that is that, before the law, the company is responsible for the correct management of each of them. In this way, the company has to specify how it will handle them and their management routes. These are grouped into three main groups: reuse or recovery, output as a by-product, and elimination or disposal of rejection.

With hazardous waste, proper management means carrying out adequate packaging, labelling and storage within the facilities where it is generated. Once the containers to store this waste are filled, they must be delivered to the authorised manager within a maximum period of six months.

On the other hand, waste such as plastic film, paper and cardboard, and pallets, are stored in a compactor, which is large-capacity containers. When they are complete, the corresponding manager is notified, who travels to the company to remove the waste.

Rotecna has installed several “clean points” with paper, plastic, organic, and other containers concerning light waste. With the start of the door-to-door collection system in Agramunt, a review has been conducted to manage this waste within the company, and it has been verified that all sections have four containers. Previously, an internal announcement was sent to workers reporting this new system so that they knew what has to be thrown into each receptacle. Therefore, this waste management is precisely the same as done at home, and the people in charge of each section are responsible for removing the containers on suitable days. The department of Quality and Environment manages waste through a platform of the Generalitat called the Documentary Waste System (SDR). This tool, commonly used by all companies, allows you to carry out procedures, such as registering as a producer, filling in waste acceptance forms, monitoring sheets, and obtaining information.

To be as sustainable as possible and environmentally friendly, we need to be careful about waste management. If we do this correctly, we will contribute to giving our waste a “second chance” and reducing the volume of rubbish that ends up buried in landfills, we will reduce the extraction of raw materials such as plastic, glass, or metals, which can be reused to produce new products, and we will save costs, both in waste management and in the manufacturing of new products, since it is more economical to manage products separately than to recover them from already mixed waste. In short, it is more responsible and economical to manufacture new products from recyclable materials than to extract new raw materials.

The company has its own mill to reuse plastic. Photo: Rotecna.