20th December 2018
Indestructible mobile phone reunited with owner 150 miles away
A mobile phone has been reunited with its owner having travelled over 150 miles to an energy-from-waste facility.
The mobile phone was accidentally thrown in to a general waste bin in Runcorn where it was collected, compacted in to rail containers and sent by rail to the Wilton energy-from-waste facility in Teesside. By pure chance the mobile phone fell from the container on to the floor instead of in to the bunker where it would have been incinerated. SUEZ’s eagle-eyed Scott Robinson spotted the phone and set out to return it to its owner.
Scott said: “Amazingly, the phone was still working and through a bit of detective work I managed to find the owner back in Runcorn and make contact with her. We get almost half a million tonnes of waste coming through here each year so it really was a miracle that we found it – there’s no way we would normally be able to relocate a lost item this way.”
The mobile phone has now been reunited with its very grateful owner just in time for Christmas.
Waste that has not and cannot be recycled arrives at the energy-from-waste facility where it is incinerated in to a furnace at temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees. The heat generated is used to raise steam which is passed through a turbine to generate sustainable electricity.
Find out more about the journey of waste and the energy-from-waste facility here.
