Knowaste, a Canadian company based in the UK, is at the cutting edge of the recycling world — becoming the first to be able to effectively recycle the plastics within children’s nappies and other sanitary products.

There has been a considerable increase in the use of these throw away nappies and personal hygiene products over the last 20 years. In the UK it generates around half a million tonnes of waste each year in nappies alone. The recycling process, that Knowaste has developed, provides an environmentally friendly and cost effective solution for many different types of ‘disposables’ that are currently being sent to land fill. In doing so it is contributing to the global solutions for the current environmental waste crisis.

The company are keen to point out that we should not be ‘land-filling’ this waste because with the quantities mentioned it could take up to 500 years to decompose and there are important raw materials to salvage. They are hoping that its plant, opened in Birmingham in 2008, will lead the way in addressing this problem both nationally and internationally.

Once the raw materials are recovered they can be used to produce items such as: plastic wood, plastic roofing tiles, absorption materials and recycled paper products.

During the recycling the waste has to be cleaned thoroughly, but their ingenious processing technique is designed to conserve resources throughout. Water is recaptured from each wash cycle and sent to an internal treatment device for clarification. The water is then reused in the system. Residue organic waste is dried and used to create green energy.

Overall with reductions in landfill and with useful recycled raw materials being recovered their work is leading to a cleaner environment with new methods that can be duplicated worldwide.

For more details please visit:

www​.knowaste​.com/​d​e​f​a​u​l​t​.​php