Crown Commercial Windows

Besides our desire to create as little environmental damage as possible, reducing the amount of waste that goes into landfill saves money by avoiding excess skip hire charges and the inevitable charge for landfill tax. Therefore recycling of materials is an important part of our Environmental Policy. To this end we now have skips and containers provided by various recycling companies to collect cardboard, PVCu off-cuts, aluminium off-cuts, old timber items and timber window frames, old PVCu, steel and aluminium window frames.

With regard to PVCu recycling, we are successful in reducing the amount and size of the off-cuts by using a computer program to optimise the cutting procedure. This is designed to calculate the most efficient way of cutting the 6 metre lengths of window profile, to keep the amount of waste (off-cuts) to less than 3%. The off-cuts are stored in small containers, which are then collected by a specialist recycling company, to be reprocessed and re-extruded into other profiles. In fact our window formers/cavity closers for new build apertures are made from recycled PVCu.

Recycling of old PVCu window frames is a relatively new initiative, and as we find that we are taking out an increasing number of old PVCu windows, we have now introduced the latest of our re-cycling facilities – a skip for collection of old PVCu frames. The frames are processed for re-use as extrusions in much the same way as our off-cuts recycling facility. Contrary to popular belief, PVCu is one of the most sustainable materials available as it can be recycled up to 10 times. More information is available on this subject by visiting the website www.pvcaware.org