Monmouth-based, Siltbuster, a leading recycling equipment specialists, has been shortlisted for CIWM’s prestigious UK Sustainability and Resource Industry Awards.

The company’s Gritbuster MRF Glass Separator is a finalist in the fiercely competitive “Award for Innovation (SME)” category.

Using this technology, material recovery facilities can now recover virtually all the glass from their waste streams and process it to a standard suitable for re-use, reducing by 90-95 per cent the amount of glass potentially going to landfill. This saves a typical MRF £800,000 in landfill tax per annum and also allows the material to be traded on the PRN (packaging waste recycling note) market.

The Gritbuster Glass Separator ingeniously addresses this, by using water as a means to separate the light and dense constituents within MRF waste, whilst also removing very fine particles that discolour the surface of the glass, and make further downstream processing using optical sorters unreliable. Dirty glass and water are fed into the top of an inclined revolving barrel, here the glass particles rub against each other creating a natural washing/scrubbing action. As the barrel revolves the lighter fraction containing the plastic, wood, paper and card separate from the glass and becomes suspended in the water stream or floats to the top. The denser glass sinks to the bottom and is carried out of the end of the barrel.

Dr Richard Coulton, CEO of Siltbuster, said: “To have such a respected organisation as CIWM put us through to the next stage of their prestigious environmental awards, is a real endorsement.”

The winners will be announced in November at the Grosvenor Square Marriott Hotel, London.