Products made of plastic are an integral part of our everyday life. However, they often have a bad image as plastic is first and foremost associated with waste in public life. Just think of bottles of soft drinks and plastic bags that stick out of piles of rubbish or accumulate on beaches. There is no question that there should be greater awareness of the use of plastic in consumer products and that it can be restricted in many areas of life, such as when we buy fresh fruit or vegetables. But what about plastics in industry? How important are they there?
Functional components made of plastic are playing an increasingly greater role in industry. The material is very versatile in that it can be used for purposes that metal cannot be or not to the same extent. As a result of this and their optimised frictional properties, plastics from igus, used for bearings or energy chains, have an especially long service life, which is also predictable.
You can also recycling your cables with us, find out more here.
The first batch of customer e-chain returns under the “chainge” program have now been recycled in a circular way, allowing us to reuse them our own display stands!
Among the returns were e-chains from an elevator at an airport and a large scale metal component machining site. We sent these to our recycling partner, MyGroup in Hull, where they were remanufactured into Storm Boards – versatile structural recycled plastic boards. Normally, Storm Boards have a variety of uses from making furniture and shop fittings to any area in construction where timber products would have been used. But for us we saw the potential to use them in our display stands.
We offer any of our customers one of these display stands for free, which are installed at your premises and come with a range of igus product samples for you to test. In the past the main panels and shelves on these were made from energy intensive aluminium but are now we use Storm Boards containing the recycled energy chains. In this way the life of the igus product becomes circular, saving valuable resources.
Every energy chain comes to the end of its service life sometime. Previously, users disposed of chains as a part of industrial waste, at best. In such a situation, it is doubtful that re-usable granulate material can be obtained, given the expense of unmixing materials for recycling. Where the end of the useful life of plastics in industry is concerned, their environmental record is therefore often not much better than that of plastics in private households.
Have your energy chain processed as part of the igus® chainge Recycling Program - no matter which manufacturer they came from.
Remove the rough dirt from the energy chain, with a high-pressure cleaner, for example.
Weigh the energy chain.
Fill in the form in order to get in touch with us.
Package the energy chain and send it to us.
Address:
igus UK Ltd
chainge Recycling Program
Caswell Rd
Northampton
NN4 7PW
You will receive a voucher that you can then use for new igus products. At the moment, we reward you to the value of 62 cents per kilogramme.
Example of a calculation for a payment in the form of an igus voucher: 50kg x £0.62 = £31.00 payment
As a company we are aware of the carbon footprint that we have on the planet. We have made lots of investments and changes into helping fight climate change but there were some smaller things we wanted to do. We have launched “the igus® big spring clean” this month and we have igus® employees up and down the country taking part in a mass litter picking scheme. This green scheme links nicely with the chainge programme we are also doing.
Here are a few images of some of the arranged litter picks.
This photo was taken on Saturday and the rubbish was literally collected around the industrial estate that the UK igus® office is based. It was quite shocking but very rewarding once we had collected it. We are working in collaboration with Brackmills BID “give back” scheme, which is dedicated in cleaning up Brackmills in various ways.
Even roping the youngsters into the litter picking!! We are very lucky to live in the countryside however this means that people throw litter out into fields where there are animals, so this was an important route for us to clean up! Knowing that the rubbish was being recycled and reused was a massive motivation.
There is a lot of woodland around Brackmills industrial estate and this attracts animals and unfortunately rubbish! As you can see, the igus® crew got well and truly stuck in, clambering through the undergrowth! If you want to do your bit but don’t want to get your hands dirty, why not participate in our chainge programme?
Find out more about sustainability at igus®, the ISO standard 14001 and environmental projects that we support.
Very different installation spaces and environments. Large product selection – find the right solution at once. With a 36-month guarantee.
Contributing towards the reduction of plastic waste and helping to improve cable recycling in the manufacturing industry.
Monday to Friday from 8am - 8pm.
24h