success story gekÅs sweden€¦ · – than the old one: “the smarter our approach to waste, the...

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SUCCESS STORY GEKÅS SWEDEN Recycling and sustainability on top of the agenda at the world’s largest department store. GEKÅS IN ULLARED is one of Sweden’s most popular and frequently visited places and it is thought to be the world’s largest department store of its kind. A department store with 4.8 million customers and sales of 5.3 billion SEK a year certainly generates a lot of waste and recyclables. Inge Nilsson, who is responsible for the environmental work and the waste management at Gekås, explains the company’s sustainability efforts, which include operations in the store and in the warehouse, as well as within the company’s network of suppliers. Through a variety of measures, the aim is to minimize the environmental impact of the business’s day-to-day operations. The bale would be 3 km long As applies to most shops and department stores, cardboard and plastic account for the vast part of Gekås’s waste streams. Mr Nilsson describes the work involved in recycling cardboard to turn it into new boxes: ”It would be large enough to park 38 800 trucks in, each with a 25-m-long trailer. It is not easy to picture, but this is what the 3000 ton of cardboard recycled at Gekås every year equate to.” “The number of cardboard boxes does not decrease just because a briquette press has stopped”. “At Gekås we recycle so much cardboard, that if we were to produce just one large box from the material, it would measure 1 km wide by 3 km long and 4 km high.” The benefits of maintenance Mr Nilsson: “I started my career on the workshop floor and I have worked my way up. “I have worked at a foundry and even a nuclear plant and my technical know- how and interest prompted me to look at how we can use our machines for waste management. That is how I identified the shortcomings in our preventative maintenance work”. Mr Nilsson started working at Gekås in 2008. At that time, servicing consisted of fixing things only when they were wrong rather than working proactively with preventative measures. Together with Orwak a regular maintenance plan was established to determine the service intervals for the machinery and it has ensured that there is no downtime as a result of faults with the machines. “In the past, it was accepted that a machine could be out of order the entire morning. The machines were just run until they broke down. But this just was not sustainable: By taking measures to ensure that the machines are in optimal condition, we substantially increase our chances of the machines working as they should,” Mr Nilsson concludes.

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Page 1: SUCCESS STORY GEKÅS SWEDEN€¦ · – than the old one: “The smarter our approach to waste, the better the conditions are for us to profit from our waste management, or at least

SUCCESS STORYGEKÅSSWEDEN

Recycling and sustainability on top of the agenda at the world’s largest department store. GEKÅS IN ULLARED is one of Sweden’s most popular and frequently visited places and it is thought to be the world’s largest department store of its kind. A department store with 4.8 million customers and sales of 5.3 billion SEK a year certainly generates a lot of waste and recyclables.

Inge Nilsson, who is responsible for the environmental work and the waste management at Gekås, explains the company’s sustainability efforts, which include operations in the store and in the warehouse, as well as within the company’s network of suppliers. Through a variety of measures, the aim is to minimize the environmental impact of the business’s day-to-day operations.

The bale would be 3 km long As applies to most shops and department stores, cardboard and plastic account for the vast part of Gekås’s waste streams. Mr Nilsson describes the work involved in recycling cardboard to turn it into new boxes:

”It would be large enough to park 38 800 trucks in, each with a 25-m-long trailer. It is not easy to picture, but this is what the 3000 ton of cardboard recycled at Gekås every year equate to.”

“The number of cardboard boxes does not decrease just because a briquette press has stopped”.

“At Gekås we recycle so much cardboard, that if we were to produce just one large box from the material, it would measure 1 km wide by 3 km long and 4 km high.”

The benefits of maintenance Mr Nilsson: “I started my career on the workshop floor and I have worked my way up. “I have worked at a foundry and even a nuclear plant and my technical know-how and interest prompted me to look at how we can use our machines for waste management. That is how I identified the shortcomings in our preventative maintenance work”.

Mr Nilsson started working at Gekås in 2008. At that time, servicing consisted of fixing things only when they were wrong rather than working proactively with preventative measures. Together with Orwak a regular maintenance plan was established to determine the service intervals for the machinery and it has ensured that there is no downtime as a result of faults with the machines.

“In the past, it was accepted that a machine could be out of order the entire morning. The machines were just run until they broke down. But this just was not sustainable:

By taking measures to ensure that the machines are in optimal condition, we substantially increase our chances of the machines working as they should,” Mr Nilsson concludes.

Page 2: SUCCESS STORY GEKÅS SWEDEN€¦ · – than the old one: “The smarter our approach to waste, the better the conditions are for us to profit from our waste management, or at least

“It is faster and has greater capacity than its predecessor.”

Gekås uses a number of waste compaction units to handle cardboard and plastic. Balers compact plastic into bales and briquette presses turn boxes into briquettes.

Greater and faster than the predecessorThrough Gekås’s collaboration with Orwak, Mr Nilsson has been actively involved in the continued development of compaction solutions. For instance, he discovered that an older type of briquette machine worked much faster than a new one:

“I raised the issue and after some measurements by Orwak’s staff, we found that my comparisons were correct. The hydraulics of the old machine were better suited to outdoor temperatures, making it faster. So my requirement was that the new machine should be as fast – and ideally faster – than the old one:

www.orwak.com

“The smarter our approach to waste, the better the conditions are for us to profit from our waste management, or at least to break even.”

“One outcome of this and of our collaboration is a new product, the Brickman 2000, which Gekås now uses”.

Space optimization for transport Gekås uses a large number of balers to compact plastic foil. It might seem natural to go for the biggest machine available considering the volume of waste, but Gekås has chosen a machine that can create bales in the exact sizes required. The Orwak Power 3420 makes bales that fit perfectly on Euro pallets. A bale can then be rolled out onto a pallet, making the height 80 cm.

Three stacked bales equal a height of 240 cm, which is perfect for standard Swedish trucks. In this way, Gekås can optimise space and place two 120-cm pallets side by side, each loaded with three stacked bales, thus minimizing the amount of unused space. Back to Mr Nilsson:

”Corrugated cardboard and soft plastics are in demand in the recycling market, so our recycling of these materials provides us with a revenue stream.”

A responsive partner“When you work with people who really listen to what you say, and who have good ideas themselves, you get a real sense of support and confidence that you will find the best possible solutions.

A direct benefit of having implemented continuous maintenance for a while now is that many of the machines that were here when I started working at Gekås are still with us and still working today. I am both happy and proud of our co-operation with Orwak.

A chute leads the briquettes to a container outdoors.

Orwak machines at Gekås A total of 7 balers1 x Orwak 33001 x Orwak 34105 x Orwak Power 3420

A total of 8 briquette presses2 x Brickman 2000K2 x Brickman 1200K3 x Brickman 900K 1 x Brickman 300