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Recycling Substrates and Liners to Reduce Landfill Waste
Sustainable Efforts Recycling Substrates and Liners to Reduce Landfill Waste
In 2020, MCC Vietnam has started a sustainability project called “PROJECT CHARTER”. The project was initiated by the local team mainly to reduce waste to landfill and disposal/waste collection cost.
Mission statement
The objective is to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill by 50%. Efforts are being made to reach this goal by engaging a recycling company that can convert the collected paper, material matrix and trimmed liner into recycled items.
Steps taken towards objective
The MCC Vietnam team initiated the conversation with some recycling plants in early 2020. They managed to find one plant with the ability to convert the collected paper waste, material matrix and trimmed liner into recyclable items. After identifying the recycler plant in Vietnam for a close collaboration, the team also found a waste collector that could pick up the waste and deliver it to the recycler.
To have the waste recycled, the recycler has one requirement that MCC Vietnam must meet. The waste must be separated based on substrate and liner. The project leader, Thomas Huynh, has come up with an idea to modify a machine that releases and separates the substrate and liner from all the setup paper and trimmed liner. One of the challenges the team faced was the limited space and manpower in the factory. First, the team fabricated a waste press to compress the substrates collected into cubes for easy storage. Second, a Waste Tech machine was used to connect with all presses to cut and collect trimmed liner in a plastic bag. This has helped to reduce manpower and storage space.
The recycling processes
The glassine liner waste will be grinded and bleached at the recycler plant and then be reused for recycled paper rolls. While, the PP/PE substrates will go through few processes such as de-inking/removing adhesive, drying, gridding/bleaching and film blowing before being recycled into tapes and bags.
The results
The project started in July 2020. Based on
MCC Vietnam’s results, they were able to recycle 88 tons of waste out of a total of 192 tons in the period July 2020 - December 2020. This is equivalent to 46% of waste that they were able to reduce to the landfill. The team believes that by 2021, the set goal can be achieved!
Sao Viet Collecting Waste at MCC
Toan Cau Gia Phat Warehouse
Waste re-seperate
Recycling process
Waste compressed Waste storage
Vinh Sam Recycle Plant
Liner/Trimmed liner
Gridding/Bleaching
Roll making
PP/PE film label rejected and released from liner
