£200k solar investment set to generate 50% of electricity consumed at MYGroup’s plastics recycling site
The solar panels are set to generate 50% of the site’s total electricity consumption
The investment marks MYGroup’s latest drive to draw more of its operations’ energy consumption from renewables on its sites across Yorkshire, reducing the company’s carbon footprint.
MYGroup has a long-standing commitment to become carbon-negative across all its waste and recycling operations, tracking and tracing the carbon footprint of each of its machines and processes, transportation, couriers and offices.
The new solar investment continues this commitment, with the panels and battery for capture and storage set to generate over 220kwh of electricity to run the office, waste sorting and other operations at the Hull site.
Rain water harvesting equipment on rooves installed at the same time as the solar panels will contribute still further, with the water collected being directed to the site’s waste plastic wash plant, saving up to 3000 litres a day.
Further investment in renewables at Hull and the company’s other sites is planned for the coming years. As well as more solar panels, MYGroup plans to produce biogas through implementation of a new small anaerobic digestion process.
MYGroup already completely carbon offsets the processing and machinery used to recycle food waste processed at its Maltings site at South Milford, with energy produced through anaerobic digestion. This process, which produces ~17,000 cubic metres of gas per day, also powers over 6,000 homes local to the plant.
The company also recovers 300,000 litres of waste oil each year – used for heating across its sites, as well as being sent to a biorefinery nearby – and produces 20,000 tons of refuse derived fuel (RDF) annually, shipped to local power stations.
Steve Carrie, Director, MYGroup, said: ‘Drawing energy from renewables is the only way our industry can scale up capacity, sustainably, to meet today’s waste and recycling demands, while moving towards Net Zero. I’m proud MYGroup is leading from the front in this space.’
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