The ecological islands (also called "ecological areas") are spaces - usually managed by the Municipalities - in which all waste that cannot be thrown away in the street bins or inserted into the dry waste bin in the areas where waste collection is done with the door-to-door method are collected.
These spaces play a crucial role in environmental protection, as they allow citizens, shopkeepers and small artisans to independently and free of charge deliver their bulky, hazardous or special waste, with the certainty that they will be properly collected and stored before being sent to the relevant treatment plants.
Organizing an ecological island
An ecological island, as we have seen, collects waste of different types, which are brought to the site directly by individual citizens. It is therefore necessary to organize specific areas within the island to store waste of the same type before sending it to the treatment plants.
Among the waste that are most frequently delivered to the island, we can find:
- Electrical appliances
- Batteries and accumulators
- Plastic packaging
- Plastic objects that cannot be disposed of in the normal recycling bins (due to their size or the type of polymer used for their production)
- Wood and brushwood
- Metal
- Cardboard and paper packaging
- Tires
- Toner
- Tubes and other rubber objects
- Rags and used fabrics
Given the heterogeneity of the materials delivered, a first selection of waste is normally made directly by the users within the island, which are separated by material and placed in separate areas. Once an area is full, the material is organized to be transported to a specialized treatment or recycling center.
Managing the spaces within the ecological island
Managing the spaces within an ecological island is as important as it is complex. Unlike what happens in solid waste treatment centers, in fact, in the islands the delivery of waste is completely entrusted to users, and there is no external organization responsible for managing the collection.
It is therefore important to organize the spaces in the best possible way, ensuring that the areas dedicated to a specific type of material do not become saturated before it is possible to schedule the transfer of the waste.
This is precisely why equipping oneself with a mobile shredder turns out to be a winning strategy for those who manage structures of this type. A shredder, in fact, allows to reduce the size of the waste and compact it, reducing the number of collections to be organized and simplifying the transportation operations. Opting for a mobile shredder, which can be easily moved to the area where the waste is located, also allows to easily transport the material to the treatment plants, without the need to load and unload the waste.
A mobile shredder is the ideal tool for realities that handle many different materials with different shapes and sizes, located in different points of the same structure; for this reason, its application in the context of an ecological island ensures great advantages in terms of cost savings, time optimization and increased efficiency.
To learn more about Camec's mobile shredder models, visit our website and contact us!
