Should damaged or in-need-of-refurbishment four-wheeled bins be transported from your depot yard to the refurbishing company’s facility, or should the refurbishment be conducted on-site at your depot?
At Storm, we believe that four-wheeled bins should be refurbished at specialised facilities designed for efficient and environmentally responsible work. On-site refurbishment at customer depots should be avoided.
Our reasons are as follows:
Most depots of local authorities or private sector companies are limited in space. On-site teams claim they only need four parking spaces for four-wheeled bin refurbishment, but this doesn’t account for the large support van.
Finding at least five parking spaces in most depots is a significant challenge for managers or supervisors, especially when on-site teams arrive early in the morning as depot labour and vehicles are heading out to work.
The site team should do a risk assessment every time they visit a depot, but even when this is done, the health and safety of the team is still the responsibility of the depot owners and managers.
To run through the health and safety policies of the depot, and the administration involved every time a new team arrives can be difficult and disruptive for the depot personal.
As an example, at Storm’s in-house facility, after bins undergo inspection and necessary repairs, their interiors are manually scraped clean. Any excess waste is disposed of in a company waste skip. Logos on the bins are removed and discarded into another company skip. Subsequently, the bins undergo a thorough high-pressure power wash inside and out to remove any remaining ingrained waste. The wastewater from this process is collected, filtered, and reused, while any residual waste is disposed of in the company’s waste skip.
On-site teams sometimes scrape out bins, but any excess waste is disposed of in the customer’s skip. Power washing is often not feasible because wastewater must be contained in a suitable bund before draining. Additionally, water recycling is not possible. Without power washing, the bins retain ingrained waste and associated odours, rendering them unsuitable for reuse.
Almost all bins that need refurbishment require exterior repainting. At Storm’s in-house facility, bins are washed inside and out before passing through a drying oven, preparing them for painting in a fully enclosed spray booth.
The spray booth features an air extraction system that channels emissions through a water-based wash and filters them before releasing clean air into the atmosphere. This process ensures that only clean air is emitted.
On-site teams should use a mobile tent for spraying, which only prevents immediate overspray. Without air extraction equipment, any emissions that escape from the tent openings are released directly into the atmosphere, posing a risk to nearby individuals. Additionally, since the work is often done near buildings and parked cars, there is a risk that small amounts of overspray could damage surrounding property.
On-site teams are typically tasked by their companies to refurbish a minimum of 16 bins per day. This often leads them to prioritise bins that need the least work, leaving the more damaged or difficult bins to accumulate at the depot. The team’s work is not independently checked by their company, placing the responsibility on depot management to ensure the work meets the required standards.
In contrast, all work at Storm’s facility adheres to ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems and ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems certification, with annual inspections and recertification by the British Standards Institution. Additionally, all refurbished bins are independently inspected by the company’s in-house quality inspectors to ensure they meet the required quality standards before leaving the facility.
Companies with on-site teams often claim that on-site work reduces the carbon footprint compared to using an external facility. At Storm, our transporters can collect up to 48 bins at once, and all our vehicles meet the highest emissions standards. When delivering new or refurbished bins, we typically pick up bins that need refurbishment, ensuring that only one journey is needed for both delivery and collection.
On-site teams (usually two people) typically refurbish 16 bins per day and use large vans for transportation to and from the depot. To refurbish the same number of bins that Storm vehicles can collect in one trip, the on-site team would need to visit three times. Even if the team stays in a local hotel, the carbon footprint from the additional journeys and hotel stays exceeds that of transporting the bins to an external facility.
Companies typically charge around £25 less for refurbishing a bin on-site compared to taking it back to a dedicated refurbishment centre. However, the disadvantages are significant:
Considering all these factors, it is generally more effective to send bins needing refurbishment to a properly equipped and dedicated refurbishment centre.
