Evolved Balers & Compactors

Across remote Nordic islands in the Arctic Circle, garbage trucks never go to a dump. The ground freezes for most of the year, and on some islands, space is so precious that there is no space to put mass composters to use during the few tepid months.

Enter, the baler. Balers and compactors are essential in a variety of industries, providing a waste management solution in some tough situations. But did you know that balers and compactors are saving the day in fast-paced but tiny fast food kitchens? Or self-regulating the waste volume in streetside trash cans?

Or, like the aforementioned Nordic islands, in areas where waste must be shipped out for processing? “The only way they can move the material is by boat,” says Roger Williams, Regional Sales Manager for Maren Engineering, which sells recycling balers and other types of balers. “They bale it up—wrap it so it contains the aroma, and it also keeps the birds and animals from it, and then they put in on a boat and send it back to the mainland.”

We decided to take a look at a handful of balers and compactors that companies considered their most productive and most efficient machines. Let’s dive into this look at balers to show you this tried-and-true tool in a totally different light.

First of all, it’s important to touch upon the fundamentals of this workhorse machine. What is a baler, what’s a compactor, and just how do these machines work?

Balers and compactors both achieve the same job: reducing the volume of waste material. A baler will compress and wrap material, either in a fully enclosed plastic wrap or with a material like wire. A compactor will only compress material that will be later hauled away.

Often, recyclable and reusable material is fed through a baler, and trash that is bound for a dump is compacted, but there are exceptions. In situations like icy island municipalities, trash has to be baled to be shipped to garbage dumps or a waste-to-energy power plant.

Balers double as compactors themselves, but they often are used on material that has been sorted and is ready to be delivered to a client, such as specific types of plastics that are crushed and bundled with the baler. Compactors are sometimes used to reduce waste that can’t be put into a baler, such as confidential waste that must be expertly destroyed or food waste that must be sent to a landfill or composting center.

Balers generally reduce material to a more dense cube than compactors, and as a result, the blocks can often be stacked while in transport or storage. They often hold up better to strain than the flatter material produced from compactors. Compactors can reduce material to overall densities of about 40 to 50 pounds per cubic foot, while balers can reduce material to densities of 60 to 75 pounds per cubic foot.

Balers and compactors can vary wildly in size and in design. Among standalone compactors, some options are closed-door compactors, open-end compactors, horizontal balers, and vertical balers.

In addition, a completely different type of compactor from the type we’re discussing—the in-place compactor—is sometimes used at waste dumps to reduce volume at a dump site, similar to an earth compactor.

Balers began to be used for automatic hay packaging and were called the “hay press,” invented in the mid-1800s. Prior to this invention, hay was transported loose in wagons, leaving valuable product to drift off from a breeze or to be pecked at by nearby birds. Needless to say, it was far from efficient.

Around the 1850s, the invention of the in-place manual baler allowed farmers to move their wares in tight bundles. In roughly 1930, the automatic baler created the round hay bales that are synonymous with America’s Heartland.

The first baling machine that produced round hay or straw bales to be marketed, according to baling company KK Balers Ltd., was called the Roto-Baler. It was invented by Allis-Chalmers in 1947 and sold nearly 70,000 units by the end of 1960.

It wasn’t long until balers began to be used for material other than hay. A US patent grant from 1941 shows the invention of a baler by Mansel S. Wells that crushed and baled used metal material, such as cans, used cars, or scrap metal. Given the importance of using every scrap of metal as efficiently as possible during the years of World War II, it’s no surprise that metal baling quickly became a popular industry necessity during the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Industrial balers for municipal waste came later. The creation of machines that could reduce the volume of waste eventually led to the creation of “in bin compactors,” which can reduce waste volume significantly, according to KK Balers Ltd.

“Machines were also developed to compact waste inside containers,” the company stated in a description of baler history. “These containers or bins ranged in size from 240,360,660 [liters] and 1,100 liters. Waste is thrown in by hand until full, whereupon companies would collect for disposal. A charge would be made for the rental of the container as well as for the collection.

“Companies soon realized that if they could compact the waste in the bin, the number of collections would be reduced and possibly the number of containers required, thus not only saving money but also valuable space,” the company stated in a baler history primer.

Now, balers and compactors range from the smallest, which can fit in an industrial kitchen, to the largest, which can be as tall as a one-story home. But it’s the versatility and efficiency that really makes these tools interesting, sales representatives say.

Sometimes, it’s not power but compactibility that you want in your compactor. Getting a good bit of power out of a small baler or compactor can be a challenge, especially when you have to be very wise about your use of floor space in urban environments.

J. Mark Lanning, president of Orwak North America, a North Carolina-based manufacturer of balers and compactors, says their smaller non-standard sized balers can be valuable to a company by bringing value in two ways.

First, they offer mechanized baling options to operations that run in smaller spaces or that have a relatively small amount of material that needs baling every day. One example is quick food service operations that have a limited amount of space for their trash, but infrequent or specialized trash removal services.

He added that any food service operation could benefit from a small-sized baler because the reduction in trash volume would decrease the amount of staff time that is spent taking garbage to nearby dumpsters. Instead, trash could be compacted or baled all day and then dumped at the end of the day or at specific intervals when customer volume is low—as long as food and health safety rules are also followed.

This helps avoid those mad dashes when employees must leave their constant task of cleaning tables in order to empty and rebag trash cans, only to rush to sanitize their hands before running to clean tables. With a compactor, the trash can be crushed to a significantly smaller size, and employees can continue to pursue other necessary tasks during those peak busy hours.

Second, smaller balers could be used to process and bale secondary commodities at larger facilities, freeing up the larger balers to work on the company’s primary commodity. This increases diversion rates, Lanning says, and improves the cleanliness of material streams.

Smaller balers can also help with the essential aspect of ensuring workplace safety. If a baler or compactor is too large, it could certainly pose a safety hazard to employees who do not have enough space to maneuver around the business’s floor space without bumping into the running machine—meaning the business owner would likely not purchase one at all. A smaller baler can remedy this by fitting in tighter spaces, allowing even space-limited operations to be able to add on a tool that can help them manage their wastestream in an efficient yet safe method.

Lanning adds that these sorts of balers are most used in vertical markets like restaurants, grocery retail, hotels, residential highrise, hospitals, schools, manufacturing, distribution centers, and convention centers. He says his customers have said small balers are “safe, fast, quiet, innovative, and efficient.”

Sometimes, each job requires a specific set of tools to reach peak efficiency. Take the case of Maren Engineering, for example. Williams says one client on a remote Nordic island needed a baler that could handle regular amounts of food waste on a steady basis, but the resulting waste needed to be baled into blocks that were as small as possible in order to maximize valuable storage space. They decided on Maren’s 2-Ram balers, which increased efficiency on this job site by increasing the amount of material that could fit into a small block. The high bale density meant all of the customer’s waste could be shipped out in fewer loads—decreasing the cost of transport and saving valuable storage space for this stinky cargo.

“The land is permanently frozen, so they can’t put in landfills. They bale it up, wrap it so it contains the aroma, and it also keeps the birds and animals from it, and then they put in on a boat and send it back to the mainland,” says Williams. “It has allowed them to keep their wastestream contained so that they don’t have a lot of animals around the area—birds and other animals eating and getting into it and spreading it and making a mess. It has also allowed the customer the ability to focus on other areas because they know their trash has been taken care of.”

Maximizing density in order to save on storage space can be a value-add for customers. Using balers to compress material into tighter bundles could mean more value per bundle delivered, more space in warehouses where sorted material is stored, more space on delivery trucks, and less employee time required to load and unload the resulting bales. Smaller bales, although heavier, make sense in a variety of work circumstances in terms of efficiency, speed of job completion, and ease of transport.

When deciding on whether a tighter bale is important to your job site, consider aspects such as cost of rent/mortgage on a per-foot basis, the value of each bale on a per-pound basis, whether you already have excess warehouse space or whether operations are in close quarters, and whether tighter bales would cause undue burden on workers (even at the same weight, more dense items can be difficult to lift, especially for individuals with joint issues). Also, it’s best to access the weight requirements on any lifting equipment used.

Similarly, sometimes a baling job needs to be as quiet as possible. In some job sites, it’s expected that work will be loud and blaring, but not every site is as boisterous. Perhaps baling is needed in an office park to crush boxes or another non-industrial environment—whatever the case, some companies are developing quieter pressing methods to get the job done, says Lanning.

Another form of efficiency is reducing the amount of money a company spends on auxiliary items, such as plastic wrap for bales or hard plastic ties. Williams says some balers, including some produced by his company, are created with plastic reduction in mind. He says from municipal waste to corrugated cardboard boxes, balers can be designed now to switch quickly from one type of wrap to another.

Let’s say an operator is feeding one type of plastic into the hopper of a baler, and she knows he has a whole dumpster of corrugated cardboard boxes to get through next. She can set up the baler to automatically process a specific load with wire, rather than plastic wrap, for the corrugated cardboard in order to avoid wasting plastic on the boxes. But this type of strategy is particularly efficient because it also saves staff time and avoids machine downtime, as well as saves money on material costs.

“Now the machine, the baler, has that capability from being a wrap to just putting straps or wire on it so they can save money on that particular grade of material,” says Williams.

The real gem within new types of baling and compacting technology is actually technology itself. Internet of Things (IoT) devices, remote access to baling mechanisms, and more internet-connected balers are changing the landscape of material reduction by making it possible to see how multiple systems are performing in real time without having to travel to each job site or baler location to access maintenance, capacity needs in particular containers, or machine downtime between materials.

Across the globe, IoT is transforming industries and making it easier than ever to interconnect devices for seamless use across platforms. Material reduction is no different. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, IoT-connected, solar-powered trash cans from PEL Waste Reduction Equipment are manufactured with miniature compactors. When the can gets too full, the compactor automatically crushes the material down to 90% of its original volume.

IoT technology incorporated also creates an automatic map of trash cans and when they need servicing. This allows for municipal waste collection staff to optimize their routes for the day based on the real-time demand—plus, it means collection staff will spend less time driving around town.

“It is ideal for car parks, for streets, in public parks, outside retail premises, or in any location where large volumes of litter are generated,” the company stated on its website. “The cloud-based BriteBin software compiles data from the individual bins and generates wireless alerts when bins are full. […] The software also compiles collection routes for only those bins requiring servicing—saving on time, reducing traffic and associated emissions, and ultimately cutting collection costs.”

IoT device compatibility in balers and compactors can give operators real-time readings on a variety of conditions such as how many times each baler has been used in a day or in a given time period, how long the motor has been running in a given time period, hydraulic fluid levels and recommended service alerts for those fluids, bale weight and general maintenance, and service reminders for the baler based on current and past conditions.

Similarly, Williams says remote device interfaces that provide workers access to balers from yards away are making it smoother than ever to switch from loading to baling at a job site. Waste management professionals can use small excavators or other machines to load the hoppers of their balers and can initiate the baling sequence without having to leave the house of the excavator. This allows for less downtime and more flexibility with the workforce, he says.

When deciding whether IoT software or remote access is needed for your balers or compactors, ask yourself this series of questions:

Do I need around-the-clock monitoring of my wastestream?

Are current pickup and dropoff methods working? Do my employees experience significant downtime in between jobs due to switching of tasks or swapping of materials—or another routine requirement that slows down or halts production?

Is maintenance on my baler being done preventatively or reactively when parts break? Does the preventative maintenance schedule follow the industry norm?

Do you have more than a handful of balers? Do you find yourself bouncing from location to location just to check on your equipment?

Does your collection staff spend an inordinate amount of time in transit, either due to traffic or due to large distances between collection sites, rather than accomplishing job site tasks and duties?

Is there ever a time that you’ve said to yourself: I wish I could just see inside that machine to figure out what is going on?

Not every machine benefits from being connected to the internet, and more data isn’t always the answer to every professional problem. However, having the right set of data about critical problems is a surefire way to have the tools necessary to get to the heart of that issue.

While balers themselves are getting a futuristic upgrade, balers in a way are paving the way for the future of waste management. It’s arguable that without balers and compactors, the recycling industry as we know it would not exist.

“Without the invention of compactors and balers, recycling would not have been practical, as the movement of loose uncompacted waste would have been uneconomical, as well as harmful to the environment,” states KK Balers Ltd. in the company’s baler history primer.

Regarding recycling, without the invention of balers, it would be difficult or nearly impossible to transport massive amounts of plastic across states, countries, and oceans for recycling. The system by which plastics are sorted, processed, and shipped to facilities to be reused in the manufacturing process would break down if plastics had to be transported as loose objects, bouncing and blowing in the wind.

The situation would mirror that of an 1800s farmer, desperately trying to guide his cart to market before a strong wind picked up, whisking away his hard-grown hay. He probably wished he could stamp down the hay or straw into a patty so that it wouldn’t be so easily moved or disturbed by every bump and bob in the road. For our imaginary protagonist, it would have literally been money wafting away in the wind.

That story has a happier ending with the addition of balers as a sidekick—that plastic stays put and remains a revenue source. And nowadays, they can even chime in for a monologue to tell you when it’s time for an oil change.