Flemington backs a winner in recycling
Inside Waste Weekly | Tuesday, 3 November 2009
The Melbourne Cup might be the race that stops the nation, but it certainly doesn’t stop waste from mounting up. This year, however, the organisers of the Spring Racing Carnival at Flemington are going to recycle an estimated 400 tonnes of glass – the equivalent of half a million champagne bottles.
The recycling of this mountain of champagne, wine and beer bottles is made possible thanks to a glass crushing machine called Bottlecycler. There will be 16 of these units situated around the track, crushing glass bottles to an optimum size for recycling.
The Bottlecycler service has been on offer to Victorian hospitality venues for quite some time, with free two-month trials on offer. More than 60% of the venues that try the service take it on permanently, with more than 1,000 tonnes of glass recycled annually.
The trial is jointly funded by the National Packaging Covenant and the Product Stewardship Forum of the Australian Food and Grocery Council. General manager of the PSF, Jenny Pickles, said the units help improve health and safety issues associated with handling glass for recycling, and “it is fantastic to see glass recycling galloping ahead in the away from home sector”.
Flemington events manager Ennis La Torre agrees his course has been able to increase recycling rates due to the Bottlecycler system, which was first used last year.
“A phenomenal amount of beverage packaging is discarded at the races – most of it is glass. Last year, the Bottlecycler machines helped us to recycle 14,000kg of glass, which is a huge amount.”
“This year we’re aiming to recycle almost 30 times as many bottles, this is made possible with the installation of more machines around the track,” he said.
Click here for more information about the Bottlecycler.
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