Recycling Plant

The kerbside collection trucks dump everything into a massive pile on the floor of the Material Recovery Facility (MRF).  From there, it's pushed onto a conveyor belt and air forced through it to separate all the items.

The first sort happens in the inspection room first where a team of people pulls out contaminants that shouldn't have been put into the yellow bin.

Everything then travels over 4 angled screens that remove different types of paper.

• The first screen removes cardboard;
• The second and third screens remove newspaper; while
• The fourth screen removes magazines and pamphlets

Once all the paper products have been removed, all that's left of the recycling is plastic and metal.

Next, a magnet and eddy current separates the steel and aluminium leaving only plastics. Plastic bottles are then perforated so they can completely collapse when compressed in the baler.

Finally, all of the plastics are automatically screened and diverted into chambers for HDPE, PET and Mixed 1-7.

Once the materials are sorted, they're fed into baler, compressed and bound with wire. The bales  are then loaded into containers or onto trucks to start their journey to become new recycled products.