From its 150,000 sq ft factory, Crown Products produces 100 + kitchens per day. The company takes sorting of waste very seriously. It already recycles waste as follows:

• Scrap metal items - half a ton per month - £50 per ton
• PVC off cuts, which are baled - about 1.5 tons per month - £5 per ton
• Cardboard, also baled - about 6 tons per month - £45 per ton.

The above items are sold to specialist contractors and the company is recompensed at the rate indicated.

In addition, the company incorporates recycled material whenever possible:

• All cardboard purchased is produced from recycled material
• The company's melamine-faced chipboard has at least 70% recycled chip content.

Crown Products faces two additional major challenges:

1. Wood waste

As a true manufacturing company, the company produces a substantial quantity of waste. The largest volume is wood-based, predominantly chipboard, off cuts/ wood chips. In total, this amounts to about 3 tons per day (not surprising when one considers that Crown Products handles between 30 and 40 tons of incoming material every day).

2. Heating

To heat any building is expensive, even if it is well insulated. To heat a very large factory building costs great deal of money.

Crown Products has managed to combine two large issues and develop a single very effective solution. The company extracts all the waste from the factory and feeds it, via a storage silo, into a sophisticated heating plant produced by a specialist Austrian company. Crown Products aims to create zero smoke from the plant by operating it at a very high temperature - in the region of 1000ºc. The heat output provides large quantities of very high temperature hot water which is circulated throughout the factory providing all the company's heating requirements. Crown Products has no other form of heating, hence it does not use any gas or oil.

The estimated saving is about £75,000 per year.

Greatly encouraged by the C4B Environmental Conference, Crown Products has already increased its waste separation activities. The company has identified further quantities of office paper and magazines which it is able to send via the contractor direct to the paper mill, achieving both some financial recovery and at the same time sending less to landfill.