How have Ladybird Skip Movers worked with Leicestershire Country Council to reduce queue times at Household Waste Recycling Centres?
Queues at the Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs) can be frustrating, especially during busy periods. When containers become full, they are swapped with an empty container using a hook lift lorry, which has to be diverted to the site if it is not already there.
When the full bin is being swapped, the tipping area is closed off to the public for health and safety reasons until an empty container is put in place. This can result in traffic queuing up whilst waiting for the lorry to finish the swap. If there are several containers to be swapped on a site, this could result in lengthy delays for site users.
Leicestershire County Council (LCC), working with Robert Bird, Director of Ladybird Skip Movers, and Rashik Lad, Senior Operations Officer at LCC, have found a solution to this problem. Ladybird introduced a remote-control unit, a ‘GAPO’, which has the capability to move full containers on HWRCs, without the need for a hook-lift lorry to attend the site.
The use of lorries can be inefficient, as it takes up their time, which is best spent moving waste to treatment sites. To address this, LCC have invested in specialist container moving units, GAPOs, to allow them to move full hook lift containers whenever they choose.
The first site to trial the skip-moving unit was their Oadby site, where they faced several issues, including queuing traffic. During busy periods when containers were full, they would need to be swapped with empty ones in order to keep the site open.
Hook lift lorries do not stand by on site, as they are servicing several sites and have to take waste on lengthy journeys to treatment sites. This has led to a loss of capacity for certain waste types, resulting in members of the public having to take the waste away and return another day. “The GAPO unit has really helped LCC to maintain continuity of service delivery to our residents”, according to Rashik Lad.
The situation is made worse during the summer period with longer opening times and a lack of available treatment outlets over weekends and Bank Holidays. Without empty bins on site, this can result in temporarily closing the site as all the containers are full, with members of the public being redirected to alternative sites.
Reduced disruption for service users
Having the capability for the on-site staff to move containers themselves has had a number of benefits. The site has to close less often due to containers being full and waiting for a hook lift lorry, and temporary loss of capacity for specific waste types is less.
The on-site team are trained to use the GAPO and can change the containers more quickly and efficiently than a hook lift lorry.
More road time for the hook-lift lorries
The lorries have a quicker turnaround time now when they attend to swap containers. The full containers are already available, and the lorry can simply drop the empty container and pick up the full one, rather than having to do several movements.
In Leicestershire, the HWRCs use static compactors and rollers to compact waste to increase the payload in the containers, reducing the number of journeys required to treatment sites and reducing carbon emissions.
The GAPO unit allows site staff to compact waste with the rollers at any time without having to wait for the lorries to move containers to them.
Vehicle and container damage
Moving containers with hook lift lorries is fine in a straight line, but when trying to manoeuvre a skip around a corner, often in a restricted space, damage can be caused to the container, the lorry and/or the bay walls. Using the GAPO has significantly reduced the risk of damage, as you can control the container movement better.