SunEnviro Eliminates Disposal Costs and Sells Recycled Material with New McLanahan Wash Plant

SunEnviro provides sustainable waste management solutions across the U.K. and is based in Norfolk, England, U.K. The business originated as SunSkips, a company providing skips for disposal and recycling services. Seeing an opportunity to process and recycle the waste collected from skips, the company grew to provide demolition services and sell recycled aggregates, significantly expanding their business.

“SunEnviro really is a circular economy business,” says Mathew Stewart, SunEnviro CEO. “We deliver the product that can build stuff, we knock stuff down, we bring stuff back to our sites, we recycle it, repurpose it.”

Challenge

SunSkips saw an opportunity to further expand their skip-hire business to include construction and demolition waste disposal and recycling. They knew that adding this type of processing fit the needs of many of their existing customers, and it would provide and foster sustainable practices in the environmental services industry.

SunEnviro was founded at this time as the parent company of SunSkips, SunDemolition and SunAggregates. SunDemolition would provide demolition services across eastern 
England and SunAggregates would process that C&D material to provide recycled aggregates for reuse.

With the goal of practicing sustainability and contributing to a circular economy, SunEnviro needed a tailored wash plant to process recycled materials for SunAggregates to sell. It was imperative that a plant be able to fit in the footprint of their available space, recover as much material as possible to minimize waste and landfill costs, and create an aggregate product to meet customer specifications. 

Solution

After reviewing various wash plant manufacturers, SunEnviro was recommended to McLanahan through Global Machinery Solutions, an equipment dealer. Ultimately, SunEnviro decided on McLanahan due to the company’s years of experience and ability to tailor solutions for its customers.

Plant Manager David Whitby said, “The reason we went to McLanahan is because we felt that that was a business that had some years behind it, and we felt it wasn’t a company that was just going to sell us a plant and walk away.”

With the help of McLanahan, SunEnviro was able to install a complete wash plant on a site that was previously used for manufacturing skips.

The McLanahan wash plant begins with a feed hopper that receives waste material from an excavator or a shovel. Material moves from the feed hopper into a VD15 Dewatering Screen, where it is prescreened.

The prescreened feed material is fed into the UltraSCRUB 3020, which is made up of a Coarse Material Screw Washer and a series of screens. The overflow from the Coarse Material Screw Washer is deposited on a trash screen module to remove waste.

After the initial scrubbing and screening processes, the aggregate material moves onto an eddy current separator that removes ferrous and non-ferrous metals. The coarse material passes over a screen to separate material into 10mm, 20mm and +20mm sizes to be stockpiled.

All of the effluent from the rest of the plant goes to the EcoCYCLE to remove remaining solids and sands. The sand fraction of the material goes through the McLanahan UltraSand to wash the sand and remove silts before stockpiling.

The underflow from the Thickener is pumped to a holding tank, where it is finally pumped to the Filter Press. Water retrieved from the Filter Press is sent back to the Thickener, while the filter cakes are sent for disposal at a much lower volume than the original amount of waste material. 

Results

With the implementation of the McLanahan plant, SunEnviro now has a complete process to recycle materials from start to finish to achieve its goal contributing to a circular economy.

“The McLanahan plant that we’ve got here at Thetford allows us to easily remove the waste products that we need from the feed material, giving us a viable product for sale back into civil engineering and highways,” explains Whitby.

Being able to recycle aggregate materials allows SunEnviro to sell high quality materials back into the market. The McLanahan wash plant has also saved SunEnviro from dealing with increasing fines disposal costs while still profiting from selling recycled products.

“We used to send 30,000-35,000 tons of the fines to landfill a year,” Stewart explained. “That’s a big cost saving for the business.”

Both Stewart and Whitby agreed that working with the McLanahan team has been a great experience.

“We’ve really, really enjoyed working with McLanahan,” said Whitby. “Every problem we’ve come up with, they’ve actually come back with a solution, so it’s been a really good partnership.”

SunEnviro’s McLanahan plant is currently running three days a week, producing 650 tons of material a day in a nine-hour shift. With low maintenance and easy operation, the McLanahan plant has provided SunEnviro with an efficient, cost-saving solution to recycle and sell material, helping achieve its goal of sustainability and contributing to a circular economy.

“I’ve worked for the last 45 years in this industry,” Whitby said. “It’s proven equipment, it’s a well-built plant and it’s very easy to operate, and for me that’s key.”