UK company designs blast-resistant paper recycling bin

Initial prototypes — tested at the Energetic Materials and Research Testing Centre in New Mexico — were made out of mild steel, but they weighed in excess of a tonne.

Kaveh Memari, chief executive officer of Renew, said: ‘We went through a number of prototype failures in 2006–2007, but by the end we achieved a square-shaped object capable of withstanding huge overpressures without relying on a terribly exotic material.’

The product now weighs 50 per cent less, after the team substituted mild steel with a high strength steel derivative. Memari said the new steel is four to five times stronger than its predecessor and only costs 10 to 20 per cent more. A glass reinforced plastic shell forms a layer on the outside of the bin and the screens are protected in double-walled aluminium housings.

Memari explained that a gel-like biodynamic armour was developed and incorporated onto some of the later prototypes to embed bomb fragments.