ORGANICS & BEYOND
Sure, you think of Onken's containers first for oil and grease recycling, but sometimes it pays to think outside the box – and we are. Our equipment can be used for so much more; in fact the possibilities are limitless just by adapting to the industries our customers drive.
After all, that’s how the oil filter recycling business got started – with a simple idea for reinventing the Onken's container to make collecting used oil filters easier for operations. And the glass industry has just started seeing the benefits of bulk collection, utilizing a reimagined version of Onken equipment for bulk collection and recycling.
The potential stretches as far as the mind can expand. Think about it: The Onken's system raises up and stays level for no spills and no awkward lifting and tilting. The way it attaches to the trailer with a chain keeps it from tipping before you get to the dump point. That transfers well to filters, because no residual oil spills. It transfers well to organics and many other industries.
From the inception of our bulk recycling system in 1983, Onken’s mission has always been to find new and better uses for our products. In those early years, we concentrated on the grease recycling industry because that is what we knew best. We knew we had a product that could and would make a difference in that market. It was a better and more efficient way to pick up and transport used cooking oil. And we were right. Our trailers and bulk containers went on to revolutionize the industry and today are the gold standard for clean and efficient storage and transportation of used cooking oil.
It wasn’t until the early ’90s that we started looking for other uses for our bulk system. When we took a closer look, we discovered many alternative uses - the most promising was the oil filter recycling industry. We found that they were picking up filters in the same way the grease recyclers were picking up grease in the ‘80s: in inefficient 55-gallon drums, transporting the drums back and forth and taking up unneeded space when they could be using our bulk system. We set our eyes on that market and changed it in the same way, this time through starting a sister company, Oil Filter Recyclers, that changed that sector of recycling forever. Today, it is the standard in the industry for efficient and clean storage, pick up, and transportation of used oil filters.
Going forward, we see the potential of many more uses for our bulk system. We have used our bulk system in many pilot programs, including aluminum, steel scrap, and glass bottle recycling. But we see another use for our bulk system which we feel compares even more closely to what we’ve done in the past with grease and oil filters…
ORGANICS
Currently there is a growing market in organics recycling. Companies are pushing to keep this waste stream out of the landfills, and we feel Onken’s bulk system is suited perfectly for this growing industry.
The current standard in this market is either small plastic garbage-style containers, or messy, hard-to-dump front-load-style containers that are unable to be kept level during the dumping process, making spills a problem. They also require an electric pallet jack to position them for the truck to empty the container.
Our current bin is a 2-yd equivalent but could easily be enlarged to a 2.5-yd or larger. It remains level during the dumping process to keep spills to a minimum and is much easier to maneuver on location, alleviating the need to carry around a heavy and cumbersome pallet jack. These advantages make our bulk system a good fit for those wanting to start out in this growing industry with less worry about spills, less space issues, and less worry about workman’s comp problems associated with moving heavy containers around with a pallet jack.