- VEEM foundry produces around 1500 tonnes of processed sand per month during the casting process.
- Producing large quantities of waste became a growing issue within the industry, as companies struggled to find new landfill sites in city and suburban regions.
- VEEM developed reclaim technologies that recycle up to 70% of processed sand and worked with local road pavement companies to repurpose the remaining 30% percent.
In the past, waste was sent to landfill facilities along with general rubbish from the community and industry. However, the process was becoming no longer sustainable or affordable and our foundry struggled to find local landfill facilities that would take the sand.
Even though our waste sand was high alkali and was a neutralizer of the normally highly acidic waste dumps, it was not considered to be a suitable product for dumping due to the chemical resin content.
Today, VEEM utilizes reclamation technology to recycle 70% of the sand within the foundry. To beneficially reuse the remaining balance VEEM worked closely with the local road pavement companies to obtain environmental approval to repurpose waste sand to the road base products. This took a number of years but road pavers were keen as the sand from VEEM was free and was much closer to their plant than the local sand pits.
VEEM now provides around 600 tons of sand to help build the highways and byways of Perth and saves around $250,000 in waste disposal costs every year!
In doing this we have reduced landfill from foundry waste sand to practically zero, benefiting both the environment and saving costs for our foundry and local road base producers. A win for all I would say!
