What happens to your recycling
Ever wondered what happens to your recycling once your bin gets emptied? Follow the journey of a plastic milk bottle through Lancashire's sorting plant in Leyland by watching our short film.
Sorting your recycling
After your glass, can and plastic recycling is collected, it's taken to the sorting facility in Leyland.
Your recycling goes to a sorting cabin where staff pick out the large items that shouldn't be there. These items can damage our machinery. Then it's sorted by machines to separate the recyclables by type.
A magnet picks up steel cans as the recycling passes over it. The recycling is then bounced over a series of metal screens. The glass is smashed into lots of small pieces that fall between the gaps, removing the broken glass. Then optical sorters separate the plastics by type.
We use an an eddy current separator to sort out the aluminium cans, because aluminium is not magnetic. Fast spinning magnets give the aluminium a temporary magnetic field which is repelled by another magnet which forces the can off the conveyor belt.
Now all the recyclables have been separated they are dropped into individual hoppers. Once there is enough of each material in a hopper, the material goes to market to be recycled. See the section about reprocessing to find out how it is made into raw materials.
Cost and income
Some of the materials have a value and some have a recycling cost but recycling costs less than other methods of waste disposal.
The income generated from the sale of recycling is put back into essential council services.
Recycling the materials
Recyclable materials from our sorting facility and recycling centres go on to reprocessing companies to turn them into new materials.
Here's what happens to the different materials:
Recycled metal is separated into different types and melted down to be made into a wide range of new metal products. Virtually all metals can be recycled into high-quality new metals.
Recycling steel takes up around 75% less energy than mining and refining new steel deposits, which is enough energy to power approximately 18 million average households.
Food tins and drinks cans are made from steel or aluminium. Both of these items can be turned into new tins and cans again without any loss of quality.
Metal collected at our recycling centres is collected and processed by Morecambe Metals and Recycling Lives.
Recycled glass from bottle banks is sorted by colour and crushed into small pieces called cullet. The cullet is then melted at 1500°C and other ingredients are added. The liquid glass can then be blown or pressed into new bottles or jars.
Glass from our recycling centres is collected and processed by Rescresco.
Other types of glass such as Pyrex, glass ovenware or wine glasses, flutes, tumblers, windowpanes and mirror glass melt at a different temperature to glass bottles and jars, so cannot be recycled in the same way.
Paper and card is turned into pulp with water and chemicals, to separate the fibres. The pulp is sprayed onto a fast moving mesh to form sheets. The sheets are flattened and passed through heated rollers to make them the right thickness. The paper is then wound onto large rolls.
Each time paper fibres are recycled they get shorter making lower quality paper, which is why tissues and paper towels, which have short fibres, can’t be recycled again.
Paper mills make a variety of papers from different recycled materials including; newspapers, cardboard boxes, writing paper, toilet rolls and tissue paper.
Anything that can’t be composted is removed and the remaining material is shredded and laid out in a long line, known as a windrow.
It decomposes and, once it has broken down the resulting compost product is either sold to proprietary garden product manufacturers, bagged for their customers, or used in soil blends.
Clothes that can be worn again are separated from the rest of the material and are passed on to be re-worn in the UK or across the world. What’s left is then passed on to registered processing companies to be turned into products like insulation, wiper rags, felt and stuffing.
Clothes, textiles and shoes from our recycling centres are collected by Colltex.
Fridges and freezers are dismantled to elemental compounds such as copper, aluminium and steel. Over 80% of the material in each fridge is recycled into new products.
Fridges and freezers from our recycling centres are collected by Gap Group for reprocessing.
Electricals are sorted and shredded into small pieces and separated into different types of metal and plastic. Each individual type of material is then sent to help make something new.
Once your electricals have been recycled they could be used for things like shipbuilding, galvanising railings and lamp-posts, in jewellery or musical instruments.
Electricals from our recycling centres go to reprocessing plants at SIMMS, Ripon Recycling or Recycling Lives.
Furniture suitable for reuse from Altham and Farington recycling centres is used by the Reuse Hub to support local families, it is sold in our reuse shops at Burnley, Preston and Garstang, or collected by community reuse schemes to be repaired and reused.
Furniture that is not suitable for reuse is either recycled with the wood or scrap metal or sent to landfill.
Cartons are processed into products, ranging from plasterboard liner to high-strength paper bags and envelopes.
Most cylinders are designed to be refilled and reused; gas cylinders are designed to have a long life.
Most cylinder owner companies now provide a 'repatriation' scheme at recycling centres. Many LPG and compressed gas brands belong to the company named on the cylinder.
Gas bottles from our recycling centres are collected by Flogas, Neales Waste or WasteCare to be checked and reused where suitable.
Plasterboard is processed to be made into new gypsum-based products, which can be used in the plasterboard and cement industry.
Plasterboard from our recycling centres is collected by Blackpool skip hire recycling centre or Recycling Lives.
Printer cartridges suitable for reuse are sent to Jem Recycling.
Mattresses are deconstructed and each textile and polymer type are then segregated and further reprocessed to ensure they meet the standards required by the customer. On average 97% of each mattress gets recycled.
We collect mattresses at some of our recycling centres, where there is space, to be recycled by Envirotex.
Wood and timber is shredded, sorted and processed into biofuel.
Used engine oil is re-refined to produce a base oil which is sold to industry.
Every 1000 litres of oil can produce 800 litres of high-quality base oil – the rest is distilled into effluent, distillate, and asphalt. Every drop of oil collected is recycled.
Used engine oil from our recycling centres is collected by Oil Salvage Ltd.
Fluorescent tubes and other discharge lamps go through a distillation process to separate the individual components for recycling or re-use in a variety of industries.
Mercury is distilled and recovered the from the phosphor powder. The mercury is then purified into various grades to be reused in various industries. The mercury is supplied to two major lamp manufacturers in the UK where it is used in the production of new lamps.
Fluorescent tubes from our recycling centres are sent to Mercury Recycling.
Waste cooking oil is taken for reprocessing to Bensons Products ltd near Widnes.
Inert waste is taken to Martlands where they reprocess the material in their recycling facility.
Household batteries are sent to Portable Battery Recycling (PBR) Limited in Manchester to be recycled.
When car batteries are processed the lead and plastic are separated, and the battery acid made safe. The car battery you recycle will typically be used to make more car batteries.
Car batteries from our recycling centres are sent to European Metal Recycling (EMR) Ltd.