CIRCULAR ECONOMY 06/06/2024
OC Paroc invested in a waste-receiving station at its factory in Parainen, which will significantly increase the recycling capacity of waste recovered from the factory and from customers.
A new waste-receiving station has been built at the stone wool factory of Owens Corning Paroc in Parainen, Finland. The station makes it possible to recycle stone wool waste even more efficiently to produce new stone wool products.
Currently in its pilot phase, the new station is an investment that will increase the capacity to recycle both the process waste dust of the factory itself and the grinding and cutting waste produced by customers.
The investment and the new station are closely linked to OC Paroc’s Closing the Loop sustainability program, which aims to find alternatives to virgin raw materials and to increase the share of recycled raw materials in PAROC® products. The aspiration is that by 2030 the factories of OC Paroc will send zero waste to landfills.
“In the Closing the Loop program, we do not only focus on recycling our own production waste. We want to focus on a step-by-step expansion of our opportunities to receive customer waste, as well as waste materials from other industries,” says Ismo Kuokkanen, OC Paroc’s Sustainability Program Lead in Europe.
Automation Increases Capacity
The new waste-receiving station has been built so that the trucks carrying waste can drive straight to the station and tip their waste load onto a conveyor located behind a vertical lift door.
The automated conveyor system takes the waste load up to a shredder, which shreds any larger pieces of waste. After this, the waste is transferred to a conveyor, which takes the recycled raw material inside the factory and directly into the process.
The reception and processing of waste do not involve any manual steps, which means that the volume of received and recycled waste can be increased. Once the pilot phase is over, the station will have the capacity to recycle thousands of tons of waste per year.
Waste Station Serves Customers
The waste station can receive both cutting waste from PAROC® products and sawing and grinding dust from OC Paroc’s factory and customers. The waste recovered by the factory through the waste station will be used to manufacture new stone wool and blowing wool.
During its pilot phase, the waste station has been receiving grinding dust from the Kingspan factory, located right next door to OC Paroc’s factory. The plan is to continue this cooperation after the pilot.
“The waste-receiving station serves not only the needs of our factory, but also the needs of our customers. The station allows us to recycle our customers’ cutting waste and dust appropriately, also increasing our customers’ degree of recycling”, says Juha Laihonen, OC Paroc’s Circular Economy Lead, Nordics.
