Renewi recycles end of life ICT equipment through its subsidiary, Coolrec

International waste-to-product company, Renewi plc (LSE: RWI) has committed to giving new life to its own end-of-life ICT equipment by recycling it into secondary raw materials.

There are approximately 4,000 computers and almost 2,000 vehicles with on-board computers across Renewi. Any end-of-life equipment which cannot be re-sold will be recycled by Renewi’s e-waste recycling specialist, Coolrec.

The appliances are firstly depolluted by manually removing batteries and cutting off cables before being treated on dedicated lines. After a shredding process, all valuable materials are separated using several techniques - magnets to recover iron, an Eddy Current to separate the non-ferrous fractions and water baths to split non-ferrous and plastics into raffinates, which are a mix of non-ferrous and precious metals.

The metals and non-ferrous are sent to smelters who extract metals from their ores before providing as new products for the industry. Plastics are further processed at Coolrec’s plastics facility, where the mix of plastics are sorted and upcycled into flakes. These flakes can be compounded into pellets or directly sold to, for instance, plastics parts producers to mould new ICT parts for the ICT equipment manufacturers.

Over 90% of the recovered raw materials will be used in the manufacturing process of new products and over 3,000 kg of ICT equipment will be recycled every year.

Sustainability is at the heart of Renewi’s business, especially when it comes to the quantities of secondary raw materials and energy that it produces. Renewi has recycled and recovered 89% of waste over the last year. This latest collaboration will help to increase this number even further.

Dieter Avonds, Director of Renewi’s Coolrec business said:

"We are committed to extracting value from waste, so being able to give a new life to our end-of-life ICT equipment is a great initiative. This equipment contains a number of valuable materials and so it is a natural choice to recycle the equipment from our own organisation into high-quality secondary raw materials."

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About Renewi

Renewi is a leading waste to product company that gives new life to used materials every day. We have more than 8,000 employees working at 200 sites across Europe and North America. Our extensive operational network means we are always close to our customers.

For Renewi, waste is a state of mind, and an opportunity. Our many years of knowledge and experience, combined with a broad range of services, allow us to offer sustainable, practical recycling solutions. We use innovation and the latest technology to turn waste into useful materials such as paper, metal, plastic, glass, wood, building materials, compost and energy.

In other words, we turn today’s waste into tomorrow’s raw materials.

The result of our work is less waste and contamination, a smarter use of scarce raw materials, and a reduction in carbon emissions. This means that we are contributing towards a cleaner, circular world in which we “waste no more”.

Renewi was created in 2017, following the merger of Shanks Group plc with Van Gansewinkel Groep BV, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Visit our website for more information: www.renewiplc.com. Images are available at www.renewiplc.com/imagelibrary.