Up until the 1990's, prior to the BSE crisis, rejected food stuffs and confectionery were typically processed for use as animal feeds.

Atritor Turbo Separator System
for Canned Products
The effects of the restrictions resulted in the increase and availability of waste organic matter. Organic matter was identified as a rich source of methane gas, which when land-filled into specially prepared sites, could be tapped off and used as fuel to generate electricity in turbine power generators. Other avenues of disposal were Composters and Renderering Companies. In all cases the  waste  needs  to  be  removed
from its packaging before being processed. Shredding or crushing was not an efficient solution due to contamination of the recovered product with packaging and a high percentage of product remained with the separated
packaging. This resulted in the product requiring sifting further before being able to move on to the following process. The poor efficiencies achieved resulted in higher recovered packaging weights which increased landfill or recycling costs. The only other option was to empty the packaging by hand which is slow, costly and has health and safety implications.

Examples of products removed from tins by a Turbo Separator include:

Beans, Pet Food, Curry, Spaghetti, Soup, Mince, Fruit, Vegetables, Cream, Beer, Soft Drinks, Fruit Juice, meat products, Pasta Products and many more.

Tins on Turbo Separator in feed

Separated Pet Food Separated tins on out feed