Gar-Binz cleans up with Bano Recycling’s help

Gar-Binz Waste Removal Services Ltd., Edmonton, Alberta, has relied on a hydraulic single-shaft shredder from Bano Recycling’s Premac Hydro series equipped with a magnetic and eddy current separator since 2015 to recover steel and aluminum from the old furniture, mattresses and appliances it hauls away for residential and commercial customers.

Gary MacLellan founded Gar-Binz in 2009 in part to address the waste his renovation company, Dymond Zye Exteriors and Renovations Ltd., generates. “We were making too much garbage,” he says of Dymond Zye.

MacLellan bought a rear-loading garbage truck in 2004 to collect and transport the material generated by his renovation projects. “It worked so well, I bought four of them,” he says.

By 2009, MacLellan says Dymond Zye was getting too many calls to pick up garbage for other people and to clean out apartments, which led him to establish Gar-Binz.

It could take Gar-Binz as long as three hours to transport the collected material to the nearby landfill, he says. MacLellan also knew the material contained valuable metals that could be diverted from the landfill to a scrapyard for recycling if they could be separated from the other materials, which also would allow him to avoid the cost of landfilling the metal.

Landfill diversion

In 2013, Gar-Binz installed its first shredder and cross-belt magnet at its 2-acre site. However, the steel the company recovered was still too dirty to bring to a scrapyard. MacLellan accumulated roughly 200 tons of the material on-site while he spent 15 months researching solutions. He saw videos of Bano Recycling’s equipment in action online and was intrigued.

MacLellan then encountered Bano Recycling at a tradeshow and spoke with Simone Bano, the company’s sales manager, before traveling to Padua, Italy, to see Bano’s factory. While there, he decided to buy the Premac Hydro shredder and magnet, along with an eddy current separator at Bano’s suggestion, allowing Gar-Binz to capture aluminum in addition to ferrous metal.

When they arrived at a price both parties could agree on for the shredder, magnet and eddy current, MacLellan says he did a “happy dance” as he was so excited about the new opportunities their installation would enable.

“That was a good suggestion they had; I’m glad I listened,” he says of the eddy current separator.

The Bano shredder is the last in a series of three shredders Gar-Binz operates. It produces a 2-inch-minus particle size from the 6-inch input material. The Bano shredder also is preceded by a picking line, where Gar-Binz employees remove large objects and unshreddables.

“By the time the machine came at the end of 2015, I had 1,000 tons of this metal to clean,” MacLellan says of the metals he’d accumulated. “I’ve been using it every day since, and the metal comes out clean. I even buy some metal, such as ladders and white goods, from other transfer stations to process with it. I can’t be any happier with it.”

MacLellan also recycles mattresses, combining their steel coils with white goods before processing them through the Bano shredder. “I can do 150 mattresses an hour, with the steel ready to go to the scrapyard.”

The fabric and foam from the mattresses are combined with wood by another local firm and used as fuel for local cement production.

Easy setup, reliable support

After MacLellan assembled the shredder using instructions Bano provided, Bano sent an employee to his yard to help with the shredder’s commissioning and to train personnel.

“Getting wear parts is easy enough,” MacLellan says, adding that the company is quick to respond to any questions or challenges that arise. “Claudio [Bano] is a pretty smart guy and will come up with a solution,” he adds of Bano Recycling’s owner. “Simone has been up here several times. Service is good.”

The machine also is internet-connected, allowing Bano Recycling to troubleshoot remotely.

“I could never say a bad thing about dealing with them; I never feel on my own.”

MacLellan says he’s still happy about the equipment he’s purchased from Bano Recycling and would buy from the company again. His only regret is that he didn’t get into recycling earlier in his career.

“I’m 65-years-old now, and I hate it. I have so many ideas of what to do with this stuff. I love being a detective and figuring this out. I wish I was 35,” he says.

Bano shares that passion and its limitless potential. •