Commentary

How do vending machines get recycled?

A recycling specialist offers an overview of the processes involved in recycling a retired vending machine to be reused for other purposes.

Image: Adobe Stock.

August 14, 2023 by Sam Roberts — Digital Marketing Manager, Connect Vending

In life there are few certainties aside from getting old and paying taxes, neither of which will ever be met with rapturous applause. But outside of our human sphere, the world around us is also aging, and more often than not this leads to the end of the useful life of items in our built environment.

Vending machines are no exception. They work hard throughout their lifespan, typically between seven and 12 years, and will have parts repaired and replaced throughout their time, ensuring they can continue to serve consumers.

So what happens when a vending machine is ready to retire? Many machines do spend a lot of time in warehouses, but eventually they need to be disposed of in a landfill or recycled. Responsible vending operators opt for recycling.

The company we work with, Davis Commercial Services Ltd. based in Northamptonshire, U.K., offered an overview of the vending machine recycling process.

The process begins

The recycling process begins as soon as a consignment of retired vending machines arrives at the DCS treatment facility where it is unloaded into a holding warehouse and prepared for an initial strip down.

When the time comes and the vending machine reaches the front of the queue, it's brought into the stripping bay where a team of workers break down the machine into several different material categories, including wires and cabling, scrap metal and insulating foam.

If the machine has a refrigerated element, any refrigerant gases will be safely collected before any components are broken down.

Metal panels are loaded onto a conveyor belt in the main dismantling space where they are transported to a secure room for crushing down into metal scraps. This area is remotely monitored, removing the need for workers to be near dangerous equipment whilst metal is being processed.

Stripping precious metals

Snack machines and floor standing coffee machines contain various electronics and control systems, typically made of copper. As one of the most easily recyclable and reusable materials, it's crucial to remove copper from wiring looms and have them sent for reprocessing.

Wiring is collected in the initial strip down and moved to an area where specialist machinery grinds down the rubber and copper, making it easier to separate the precious metal from the plastic insulation. Once separated, the ground copper is then packaged, weighed and shipped to a facility where it can be repurposed.

From foam to flooring

Foam recycling is an important part of the process. For many years, the insulation foam that helps refrigerators and vending machines maintain low temperatures to preserve food and drink was considered a hazardous product that had few applications for reuse.

Now, however, the recycling team utilizes cutting edge technology to break down insulated foam into a granular form, whilst removing harmful volatile organic compunds and making the material non-hazardous.

This granulated foam mixture has a far more flexible set of reuse options and can be manufactured into insulated bricks, oil spill kits and insulated screed flooring.

Every ton of foam that is diverted from an energy-from-waste plant and reprocessed into new materials prevents 1.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide being released into the environment.

The final stages

With precious metals stripped out, environmentally harmful refrigerants removed and insulation foam processed safely into a granular form, the more challenging stages of vending machine recycling have been completed.

Other parts of the machine such as plastics and glass are collected and processed separately, taken off-site to be turned into other products for sale.

The metal scrap from the vending machine carcass is also sent off to a processing plant where this can be recycled into metal sheeting and utilized for other purposes.

This leaves very little that cannot be recycled or repurposed and ensures that even when a vending machine reaches the end of its useful life, it brings life to new products and does so in an environmentally conscious way.

Hardware