A busy day on the Windermere Road yard calls for one man, Quality Supervisor, Craig Flounders, and his team. Having worked at J&B Recycling for five years, Craig is based at the Windermere Road MRF and works to check the quality of incoming wastes and to ensure the quality of material distributed for recycling.
We caught up with Craig to chat about quality inspections, his best memories at J&B, oh, and Everton.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I originally started working at J&B Recycling in 2015 as a banksman and auditor of materials in the Quality team.
I had previously worked in a forge with hot steel and knew of the Jackson-Smith family as I have lived in Hartlepool my whole life. After unfortunately being made redundant from my previous job a friend of mine recommended me for a job at J&B.
I have since been promoted up to Quality Supervisor and oversee the Quality Team: Marta, Sean and, our new employee, David.
What do you do as Quality Supervisor?
Every day we control anyone coming into the yard, ensuring that it is safe for people and vehicles to come in and operate as well as reversing vehicles in order to tip off material. We also check loads as they are tipped off and do audits on the incoming wastes to send the results to the Operations Manager, Ashleigh, to record the quality of the supplies.
We coordinate the vehicles coming onto the yard with the team on the weighbridge ensuring that everyone is in the right place at the right time; particularly when it is getting busy. After a while you get used to working with all the big vehicles and myself, Marta, Sean and David successfully monitor this. We have never had any complaints!
Our team is really motivated and works well together. At times there can be more pressure and as supervisor it is my role to arrange audits but the team helps me get everything organised and we always get things done. Ashleigh also helps me a lot and always points me in the right direction if things are difficult.
What is a waste audit?
We have a schedule of how many audits we need to do a month, these include different loads every day and can vary.
When a vehicle has tipped off, a mechanical grab will fill two buckets up to 60kg for us to inspect. We bring this material to our quality inspection building and tip it onto a table and sort through it by hand. If it has glass in it will fall onto the floor and go into the Zig Zag to be processed. This inspection all gets recorded and is reported back to the office to show the quality of the material. If the material is contaminated, Ashleigh will also inspect it and we will rectify it from there.
What do you enjoy most about working at J&B?
I love meeting and talking to new people. I am easy going and can get on with everyone so it is great to be part of such a friendly, motivated team and to have a good relationship with all the drivers. We have a good communication level with them all, most of the drivers who come in have been coming in for years now so it is great to have that one-to-one working relationship.
What do you enjoy outside of work?
Well, I love football. I follow a lot of sport in my spare time and I support Everton; I have always supported them since I was a kid, it’s the proper side of Merseyside!
I always wanted to be a footballer when I was younger too as I was always into sports. I used to play a lot of football but I injured myself and discovered going out, so I don’t really play now!
And lastly, have you learnt anything interesting whilst working at J&B?
When I first started myself and our Operations Manager, Ashleigh Sweeney, went to Warrington to see the process of what happens to aluminium. We saw it being melted down and what happens for it to be made into new materials. It was interesting as it linked back to when I worked in the foundry and how they make ingots.
I also find it amazing seeing what people recycle. I am still shocked by what you see thrown into the recycling bin that should not be. I did not realise all the different processes and things that went into recycling prior to working here; who would know there are so many different types of card? Before working at J&B I just threw it in the bin and did not think about what happened after. You learn so many different things in this industry it is great.
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