Ekko Waste Solutions Ltd

Ekko Waste Solutions is a multi-award winning innovative glass recycling expert which has developed bespoke glass bottle crushing machines, glass collection vehicles and systems which make closed loop glass recycling a reality.

Scotland is a land of innovation, what other small country can boast the invention of the telephone, the television, the light bulb, the pneumatic tyre, bicycles, roads, logarithms, the refridgerator, MRI scanners, the bank machine, PIN numbers and even penicillin?

In a recent study scientists tried to explain this inventive anomaly with various theories including the high level of rainfall, a natural curiosity, a good education system and even the wonders of Scotch Whisky!

When it comes to Ekko Waste Solutions and our award winning closed loop glass crushers and systems the answer is more obvious. The Scottish Government had a vision for a zero waste society and set out a Zero Waste Plan to make sure Scotland benefited from the economic and environmental advantages to be gained.

With a target set for 70% of all Scotland’s waste to be recycled by 2025 the government introduced regulations to support separate collections of waste from commercial premises encouraging recycling, recovery and diversion from landfill.

The Waste (Scotland) Regulations came into force on the 1st of January 2014 and commercial premises had to present their waste in 4 streams – general waste, dry mixed recyclate, food & glass.

Overnight the streets and lanes of Scotland were over-run with an army of multi-coloured bins and waste collectors were forced to visit their customers on four different occassions to collect the waste in separate vehicles. The result was congestion and increased pollution. In addition to this Edinburgh City Council imposed a “streetscene” policy which outlawed waste bins from commercial outlets being kept on public land.

With many commercial businesses occupying city centre buildings which were not designed for high levels of waste throughput, space became a premium.

Ekko Waste Solutions had by this time developed its unique 8th generation mobile glass crusher which reduced the volume of the glass waste by up to 80% and produced glass “supercullet” which is certified to be 94.8% recyclable. The glass bottle crushing unit was designed to be located and used anywhere that produced post-consumer glass waste including bars, clubs, restaurants, hotels, shopping centres, airports and railway stations.

Ekko had also invested in designing, developing and producing efficient custom built trucks with small bodies and high payloads to collect glass in high density built up areas where congestion, pollution and access is often an issue. With the equipment and infrastructure developed and ready to go Ekko Waste Solutions grew rapidly, offering equipment and services that were unique. Ekko soon discovered that their advanced systems and vehicles also worked extremely well for traditional glass collections and Ekko started collecting glass waste for National and Regional waste companies that did not have their own developed glass waste infrastructure.

Ekko created a network of tipping points with a small footprint where glass was bulked up to be transported to a central dockside location ready for export to European countries for processing back into bottles. This changed when a sophisticated glass processing plant was built in Central Scotland and opened in 2015. Capable of processing 140,000 tonnes of glass each year this plant was built to feed the large Whisky industry that Scotland is famed for. With advanced optical sorting using laser technology this plant can sort mixed glass as small as 4mm into its individual colours ready for recycling. This made closed loop glass remelt for recycling a reality in Scotland. Ekko now have the case studies, the recognition, the expertise, the experience, the knowledge and the ability to replicate this system in its entirety in other markets across the world. The benefits are many.

Ekko also has a large collection network across Scotland which is ideal for maximising the benefits of the 2023 Deposit Return Scheme.

The Ekko Vision.

From Innovation to Commercialisation to Participation!

Ekko Waste Solutions was founded on a vision. To create a closed loop circular glass economy using glass crushers that produced processor friendly crushed glass. The benefits were obvious but the reality was not as simple. Glass crushers are not a new idea, originally they were designed for the marine market and their purpose was to crush glass bottles into the smallest possible pieces to reduce storage space. The machines were large, expensive, noisy, unreliable and frightening to use. The glass cullet produced was closer to sand than recyclable cullet and was generally landfilled or used in aggregate applications.