The only automatic baler in the country to use plastic ties has saved the Isle of Wight precious landfill space. And helps generate enough power to supply 3000 homes.

Island Waste (a wholly owned subsidiary of Biffa Waste Services) operate the household waste collection for the island and since November 2008 the waste has been burnt in a new facility that is part of Defra's New Technology Demonstrator Programme. Based on the same site, Energos, which is part of energy technology company Ener-G, uses its own patented gasification technology – a thermal treatment process that converts residual, non-recyclable waste into a gas by using the heat of partial combustion to liberate hydrocarbons. The heat produced is recovered to produce steam and electricity with extremely low emissions. The process generates 2.3MW of electricity from residual waste, enough to power more than 3,000 homes.

"We are very proud to have made available to the UK waste industry the first viable and proven alternative to incineration. We can make a significant contribution to the government's renewables target, with a typical Energos plant generation 8MW of green electricity. This is sufficient to power 10,000 homes and would equate to the output of 18 large wind turbines."

Fortunately we were able to install a Presona LP50 that uses plastic ties instead of wire, meeting their customer’s requirement that everything could be burnt.

John Hammond the Resource Recovery Facility Manager for Island Waste says that the Presona baler is the key factor.

Ashley Middleton says that he watched Presona develop the new method and is pleased that there is now a UK application. "The baler is a conventional pre-press machine but uses five polypropylene twine strands instead of wire ties. Sweden has more heat and light plants than us so they foresaw the need first. It’s the only fully automatic baler in the UK that produces a mill size bale that does not use wire.”