4 reasons your business should hire a baler

Dealing with the waste from your business can feel like an uphill struggle sometimes. It needs to be sorted and separated and then stored until it can be collected., when the whole cycle begins again.

The costs of those collections can feel extremely high, particularly when they occur so frequently, and many businesses are now looking for ways in which they can reduce their expenditure when it comes to waste, as well as dealing with the inconvenience and lost time that it causes.

Hiring a baler for your business can be the ideal solution to many of your problems in the world of waste. It is a piece of machinery that has a great many benefits, and it can save you money too.

Here, Flame UK, specialists in waste management, look at why a baler can be such a useful tool for your business.

What is a baler?

When all of your waste is put into one spot, it can start to look as though it is taking over. A baler reduces the volume of this waste by using weight to press it all tightly together. This compacts it all down into bales which tend to be much more manageable.

There are a variety of sizes available when choosing a baler, and the one you need will be dependent on the amount of waste they are going to be required to deal with. For example, a standard 60-inch cardboard baler would produce around two bales of 50 cubic feet per hour.

They can handle a variety of materials but are most commonly used with recyclables such as paper, cardboard, aluminium, fibrous materials and plastic. Some balers are designed for one specialised type of waste whilst others can handle multiple waste streams. There are manually operated or automatic balers, so you can find one that meets the needs of your staff and your business.

1. Space saving

Space is always at a premium in any business, so it can be annoying to have to set aside so much of it just to accommodate your waste. Piles of cardboard or plastic seem to grow every time you look at them until you find them sprawling across your yard or warehouse floor. These can be a health and safety nightmare, creating trip hazards, fire risks and mess.

Alternatively, you might find bins and skips everywhere you turn which take up massive amounts of floor space. You will always have better uses for this space, but what can you do about it?

The answer is to hire a baler. The machine itself takes up very little space and it can compact down seemingly huge amounts of waste into tight cubes that can be stacked and stored much more easily and using a fraction of the space. By keeping everything compact and tidy, you can also reduce the risk of infestations from rodents and insects, as you have taken away the places where they like to burrow and nest.

2. Reduced costs

Every business wants to find ways to save money, and it can seem hard to do that when it comes to waste. However, a baler can be very useful in this. A bin or skip is often filled with a lot of rubbish but also a lot of air. It is collected when it appears to be full, but if the waste contained within it was actually compacted down, there would be a lot more space still available. By baling your waste, you can reduce the frequency of your collections, fitting more into each one and save money immediately.

Landfill Taxes are calculated based on the weight of the waste that you take to landfill sites. By using your baler to recycle more you can save huge amounts of money on this front.

You might even find that having a baler on site opens a new revenue stream, as recycling companies can find bales of uncontaminated recyclable waste such as plastic and paper an attractive prospect and will pay to take them off your hands. This can deliver a saving of around £100 per tonne compared with sending waste to landfill.

3. Being more productive

Every business owner wants their staff to be more productive, which means finding the best ways for them to use their time. Often, employee time can be taken up with taking apart and folding or tearing cardboard boxes and other types of waste in order to fit them into a bin. It is hard work and very time consuming, and certainly not a job that anyone really wants to do. A baler can take a lot of the strain for you when it comes to this. Simply put the boxes into your baler and allow it to crush them without any strain for your staff. It takes just a few seconds, freeing them up to do other things.

4. Boosting your green credentials

In a world where we are all much more aware of our responsibility to the planet, consumers and businesses are thinking carefully about who they choose to support. Many now prefer to give their customer to companies who they believe are taking the environmental concerns seriously.

When you begin compacting your waste streams with a baler, you will minimise the amount of waste that you send to landfill and reduce the number of collection trucks that are on the road. This all stands you in good stead when people start looking at your green credentials and concluding whether you are the kind of business that they want to work with.

In the world of waste, a baler certainly seems to be the way forwards. Instead of worrying about the outlay of buying one, hiring gives you the option to easily upgrade if you wish to and have a maintenance service on hand when you need it. Dealing with your waste in this way can only benefit your business, and with the increased recycling that you will be doing, it can give your green credentials a bit of a boost too.