GOUGH ENGINEERING LTD has completed a waste Sawdust separation plant at Pets at Home. The UK's largest pet shop has over 260 stores nationwide and has up to 25 tons of Sawdust and hay a week returned from their retail outlets to their National Distribution Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. The animal bedding, contaminated with animal droppings, paper, cardboard, plastic cups, animal toys and other undesirable items, enters the facility via pallet sized containers to be recycled.
Landfill charges for this kind of waste can be in excess of £50 per 100 kg therefore Pets at Home needed a solution.
The design and layout of the plant was developed following trials and demonstrations at Gough's Stoke on Trent facility concluded by a team of engineers from Pets at Home, Nicholls Air Systems and Gough Engineering. The scheme was finalised in the autumn of 2009 and was installed by January 2010 at the Pets at Home Distribution Centre.
The outcome was a Vibratory Feeder, screening and conveying process followed by a vacuumed air separation hood. The waste enters a Gough receiving Hopper to accommodate two bags of 10m³, it is then fed into two Heavy Duty Linear Vibratory Feeders that convey the wood chips contaminated with small pieces of animal waste, card, plastic, wood, etc at a rate of 1300 kg's per hour. The waste is screened along the Feeders and the heavy undesirable items fall into a collection bin to be disposed of, whilst the lighter recyclable hay and sawdust is sucked and blown by the 'Air Knife' separation vacuum, as supplied by Nicholls Air Systems, into a 14 metre sealed road wagon to be sent off for recycling.
The Pets at Home Distribution Centre processes 120 pallets a day on a 24 hour cycle, which equals over 50,000 kilograms per day being screened and recycled. The result of the scheme has saved the company tens of thousands of pounds in waste collection costs and consequently Pets at Home received a nomination for the Top Recycling Awards 2010 for doubling its recycling rate to over 70%.