Where does our recycling go? - Part 1

PMK Recycling Ltd. Picking Line (© PMK Recycling Ltd. 2016)

Do you ever wonder where your recycling goes after you leave it on the kerbside in the bin for the council to take away?

I did, so a trip to the local recycling plant was required. My local one does not actually recycle the goods, but divides them into their separate groups, such as PET plastics, glass, steel, aluminium, and the one that really surprised me was concrete, which was smashed up into small pieces that could be used elsewhere, such as being the aggregate for new concrete. The smashed concrete was outside. along with a large amount of glass bottles straight out of bottle banks which were to be processed.

Inside the first section of the large shed were two hoppers being fed on conveyor belts. Inside the hoppers are trommels with 20mm and 50mm holes to filter out the smallest items. Anything that falls through these holes is whisked away on one conveyor belt, and all the items too large to fall through are taken away on another belt.

The items which fell through the holes are sent into another hopper, which has a large vibrating plate inside. This causes the paper, metals and plastics to be filtered out and sent to one pile, and the glass to be sent to a separate pile.

The conveyor belt with the larger items headed up towards the picking line, however before it reached the line, a magnet removes all the steel. After this, the employees on the picking line remove everything that isn't paper, so all aluminium cans for example. These items are dropped into various bins, which, when full, are put through a baler and stored as a bale ready for the next part of their journey. The paper wasn't picked because it fell into the end bin and was then baled the same way.

I was advised that some of the plastics, such as green drinks bottles, have to be separated from the clear, as they cannot be dealt with the same way, and how the different types of plastics go to different processing plant, depending on the material they are made of. So, for example, an empty packet of washing liquid would be separated from drinks bottles.

It's an impressive process to see how an empty can of drink can go from the bin full of recycling to being separated and ready to be sent away for re-processing in pretty quick time.

Of course all this helps preserve the natural raw materials that, without the companies such the one I visited doing this vital work, would be mined or made, losing more natural resources that are so important to so many aspects of the planet, and creating greenhouse gases that we cannot really manage.

A special thanks goes to Damian at PMK Recycling for his guidance around the site and his explanations of everything I didn't understand (which was a lot!).