After the successful development of Beaulex, the French company Newbac has become exclusive Beaulex distributor in France.
The challenge
France is one of the countries where ground car tyres are dumped under the surface, to provide support for a hardened surface on top. Newbac, a French specialist of rainwater basins, realised that there were a lot of disadvantages to this solution. The space created is relatively limited because the rubber is pressed together under the weight of the top layer. Furthermore, a lot of diggers are needed for the installation, but most importantly, rubber contains a lot of chemicals that, with time, can contaminate the groundwater. Newbac contacted DW Reusables to develop a new sustainable solution to replace the car tyres. Other requirements were that the solution should have a higher cavity than car tyres and had to be easy to install.Our approach
The DW Reusables Injection Moulding team in Bilzen, Belgium designed Beaulex: a user-friendly solution to efficiently drain rainwater that does not easily seep into hardened surfaces. The principle used was straight forward: Injection moulded hollow balls, made from post-consumer material, to dump under the hardened surfaces. The balls temporarily store the water that cannot immediately seep into the ground, allowing it to slowly be absorbed by the soil.The results
Thanks to the specific design the balls create a cavity of 80% of free space between them. This means that every cubic meter of Beaulex can buffer up to 800 litres of water, because the amount of free space is much greater than with ground car tyres. The soil surface needn’t necessarily be entirely flat, because the balls can naturally spread out and create an even upper surface thanks to their shape. Moreover, the system neither needs construction work nor detailed calculations. Dumping is all it takes. The main advantage of Beaulex however, is that it is the most sustainable solution. The balls are made using so-called post-consumer plastics, an umbrella term for polyolefins recycled from various waste streams.About the partnership between DW Reusables and Newbac
After the successful launch of Beaulex, a series of test projects with impressive results were conducted between DW Reusables and Newbac. The French installator of rainwater basins is now the exclusive distributor of Beaulex in France.