New Recycling Machinery at R.O.L.E.

Jun 12, 2020 | Waste Management, Recycling and Upcycling

Aligned with Bondalem Project’s aim, R.O.L.E. Foundation is also improving its waste management and recycling capacity by adding recycling machinery in the R.O.L.E. Environmental Centre.

The machinery

Both R.O.L.E.’s and Bondalem’s waste site will get new machinery for the recycling process. So far, R.O.L.E. has obtained a glass crusher on May 2020, and a plastic shredder and washing table arrived on 2 June 2020. The sorting table will arrive soon.

How the machinery work

Before inserting the plastic and glass into the machines, it needs to be sorted first on the sorting table. After this, the plastics are cleaned in the washing table, consisting of four tanks. In these tanks, the contents of the bottles and plastics are emptied, the plastics are rinsed with water, then washed with soap, and finally rinsed with clean water again. Voila! Now it is all cleaned and can be processed in the recycling machine.

The mechanism of the glass crusher and the plastic shredder are actually similar. One should put the plastic and glass one by one into the machine and it will shred or crush the material into small pieces. These pieces will then be processed into upcycled products. Sometimes, more materials like cement need to be added, or it can be simply molded into a new product.

For example, coasters or surfboard fins can be made from plastic shreds. And by adding cement, tiles and various homewares can be made of the glass pieces.

The recycling plan

With this new machinery, R.O.L.E. can start its own recycling project to make various products. We plan to engage people from the surrounding Sawangan community to bring their plastics and/or glass bottles have it recycled and upcycled. The upcycled products will be sold to support the programs and projects in the environmental centre. Ideas for upcycled products are glass tiles and plastic coasters, and we are developing more ideas for upcycled products.

What’s next?

The machinery will be placed in the Waste Management station, after the roof construction is finalized. And then we will start upcycling! We will keep you informed the upcoming blog posts.