What is a de-packaging system and which industries use them?

What is a De-Packaging System?

Think about everything you throw away that contains packaging – canned foods, kitchen food waste, plasterboard, plastic bottles, loaves of bread, coffee capsules and more. Often, if the contents are organic, solid or liquid, they can be recovered and re-used (e.g. for compost or animal feed) and the packaging may be recyclable.

At most recycling facilities, if you cannot recycle the entire packaged product as is, the entire product gets sent to the landfill. Despite your best efforts, a large portion of your recyclable materials doesn’t get recycled at all. What if there was a machine that could change that?

In comes the de-packaging system. Innovative de-packaging machines remove up to 99% of dry or liquid material from packaging. The de-packaging system can separate the liquid waste from the plastic bottle or aluminium can and the bread from its plastic wrapper. Now, you can recycle even more without changing anything about your disposal habits.

How Does a De-Packaging System Work?

To separate contents from their packaging, a de-packaging machine takes the characteristics of the packaged material, principally size, weight and density, and uses the rotating paddles within the machine to open up the packaging. This allows the contents of the packaging to be released and then pass through a screen to be recovered. The packaging is too large to pass through the screen and this leaves the machine through a second exit. This way we achieve clean separation between the packaging and the contents.

The Turbo Separator

Wastech Engineering is Australia and New Zealand’s exclusive distributor of the ATRITOR Turbo Separator de-packaging system, which has completely revolutionised recycling solutions for high-volume facilities nationwide.

The Turbo Separator comes in a range of models, each with a different throughput, and suitable for a wide range of recycling applications, including:

• Plasterboard – Separates gypsum from its backing paper, releasing both materials for recycling.
• Food & beverage – Separates packaging from out of specification, out of date or incorrectly packaged products, for recycling, repacking, or disposal.
• Animal feed – Separates packaged food products for incorporating into animal feed.
• Compost – Separates materials from their packaging for use in compost
• Cosmetics – Separates contents from their packaging for recycling or disposal.
• Secure destruction – Separates contents from packaging for secure destruction of packaging.

Benefits of the Turbo Separator

Through a combination of centrifugal forces, self-generated air flow and mechanical action, up to 99% of dry or liquid material can be removed from their packaging. When compared to other methods of packaging separation, the Turbo Separator achieves higher separation efficiencies with lower power consumption, which results in reduced running costs.

The Turbo Separator can be installed as a standalone system or integrated into a complete recycling solution.

If your company produces a high volume of food waste and packaging items, a de-packaging system can help you make your disposal processes more sustainable. To learn more about the Turbo Separator and Wastech Engineering’s other recycling solutions in Australia, call us on 1800 465 465 or find more information online.