Bailers
Bailers are used to compress and bind materials, usually industrial, retail or consumer waste or byproducts, for shipping or recycling. Bailers come in two basic styles: vertical and horizontal. These describe the way the material travels through the machine as well as to the way the material is loaded into the machine. Horizontal bailers take up more floor space than vertical balers, but they have the advantage of greater load capacity and more automated functions. Vertical bailers often are single load machines and need to be manually unloaded when the compacting and baling is complete. Vertical bailers are used in smaller facilities that produce less waste and often deal with scrap that is lighter in density and volume. The automotive or packaging industries will often utilize larger horizontal industrial bailers to make the removal and transportation of scrap materials easier. Balers, baling presses and recycling systems of all types are used in many industries, including medical facilities, restaurants, junk yards and schools.
All bailers work through the same general process, in which the bailer is manually or automatically loaded through an input area that leads to a chamber where the material is pounded, smashed or squeezed into a compact size by a large plate. The compaction of the material is powered through a hydraulic feeder system, which automatically feeds the baling material and produces bales in fixed sizes and widths. These bales can be manually, mechanically or automatically ejected. The input area leads to a chamber where the material is pounded, smashed or squeezed into a compact size and then bound. Wire, plastic or string is often used in the binding. Bailers can press and bind virtually any material, particularly waste such as garbage, plastic, metal scraps, paper, scrap cloth and agricultural products. Cardboard bailers, for example, are used commonly in retail, consumer and manufacturing industries to minimize cardboard waste size for storage and transportation. Bailers come in a variety of customizable sizes, levels of durability, capacities and turnkey recycling system options.
Bailing waste materials reduces storage size and transportation size, saving companies time, money and carbon footprint. However, waste materials in nearly every industry can be bound by bailers, from food scraps to old tires. As a result, as recycling becomes more central to industrial manufacturing processes, bailing equipment will continue to play a central role in the process as well. Materials are baled in order to be shipped to recycling facilities to be reused in the production of future items, such as scrap metal recycled into new sheet metal for car bodies. Sometimes material can be re-used to create an entirely new material, such as the recycling of newsprint for the creation of fibers used in shoe soles. For high waste-producing industries, such as plastic manufacturing and grocery stores, the choice of compacting waste materials for recycling is a matter of cost economy. Waste must be disposed of whether it is recycled or not, but using compactors to reduce waste bulk cuts down on carbon emissions, and recycling used materials for profit or for material recuperation provides an ROI on waste which would not have existed otherwise.