The City of North Bay has a new recycling initiative thanks to some unique equipment from Finland.
The city showed off a new ALLU screener and crusher bucket attached to a loader during a media event Friday afternoon at the City Yards off Old Callander Road.
The new bucket is one of only a few of its kind in Ontario. While the price tag was almost $100,000, city officials say the new equipment is already creating big savings.
“By screening those old construction materials and re-using them it allows us to save about $50,000 in purchasing those gravel materials, so number one it’s going to save us money, $50,000 per year than having to go out and buy material, it’s literally going to pay for itself in two years, in the six months that we’ve been using it its paid for itself already to be honest,” said Chris Mayne, Vice Chair of Public Works, during the media demonstration.
Mayne estimates the new screening bucket can sift through 1,000 tonnes of waste material per day.
“Rather than continue to build up a mountain of rocks and garbage, now we’ve got a chance to mine through the material with our own equipment and machinery,” stated Mayne while standing in front of a gravel pile about about 10,000 tons in size at the City Yards.
David Crozier, Fleet Supervisor City of North Bay, believes the new ALLU equipment is saving the city time, money and they are limiting the environmental footprint as well.
“What it does is it actually filters out the decent material and leaves you with unwanted materials that can be disregarded,” stated Crozier.
“The ALLU bucket that we’ve got here attaches to our current loader, it’s a quick attach system so it can be removed and re-installed quite quickly. It’s got three separate driver rollers in it and two hydraulic drive motors and exchangeable teeth.”
North Bay is one of the only municipalities using this ground breaking technology, but Mayne and Crozier believe more communities will want to add the ALLU equipment when other communities see the value it is bringing to the City of North Bay,
