Recycling: Where does it all end up? (From Redhill And Reigate Life)

Recycling: Where does it all end up?

2:58pm Monday 13th August 2007

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NEXT time you open a cereal or washing powder box or sip on a bottle of juice, spare a thought about where the bottle or box came from.

It may have been made out of recycled materials. Councils and politicians are always trying to encourage us to recycle and it is not surprising - Surrey households throw away around 574,000 tonnes of rubbish every year. Around 27% is recycled but the rest goes to landfill sites where councils must pay £3 in landfill tax for every tonne of rubbish. By 2012 the tax is expected to rise to £35 a tonne and with landfill space running out, there is only one option left - recycle.

So what happens after you've visited the bottle bank, bagged-up your grass cuttings and the dustman has collected your rubbish?

Glass

GLASS from the borough's bottle banks is sent to Surrey Waste Management in Dorking to be crushed and sent on to O-I Manufacturing in Harlow, Essex.

There the crushed glass, called cullet, is melted in a furnace at 1,500C before it is refined and cut into "gobs" which are moulded and cooled rapidly.

Next they are reheated and allowed to cool gradually to make the bottles stronger before being finished with a coating to make them smooth. O-I makes bottles for the drinks industry, including J2O juice and Grolsch lager.

Textiles

TEXTILES are collected in banks operated by disability charity Scope, which sorts the clothes into those good enough to re-sell and those to be recycled.

Many of the clothes are resold in Scope charity shops and the remainder sold to the flocking industry where they are turned into car insulation, roofing felts, speaker cones and furniture padding.

Woollen clothes are sold to specialist firms to make yarn or fabric and cotton and silk can be made into cloths or used in the paper manufacturing process.

Green waste

GREEN waste collected in special bags is taken to Earlswood Depot and transported to KPS Composting Services in Isfield, East Sussex, where it is checked for contamination and put into a shredding machine.

The mulch is laid out in rows where its temperature is monitored and it is turned to kill any bugs. This process lasts between seven and 14 days when the mulch can reach temperatures of 80C. The compost is stabilised for ten to 11 weeks at 45C, when it is turned six times.

Finally it is put through a sieve which filters out large particles before it is delivered to farms such as Boathouse Farm in Isfield which grows potatoes for organic box schemes.

Paper and card

PAPER and card collected in the borough are taken to the Earlswood Depot where they are put in bales.

These are sent to Severnside Waste Paper in Croydon and on to the company's paper mill in Maidenhead.

There it is turned into paper pulp and milled into giant rolls before being sent to DS Smith Packaging, a manufacturer of cardboard boxes.

The company claims it makes one in four cardboard boxes in the UK.

The recycled material eventually returns to supermarket shelves as boxes for Budweiser beer, display trays for Cadbury's chocolate and packaging for Fairy washing-up liquid.

Cans and plastic bottles

CANS and plastic bottles from collections are taken to Earlswood Depot before being delivered to Grosvenor Waste Management's plant in Crayford, Kent, where they are separated into steel, aluminium and plastic.

The sorted tins are put into bales and sold to manufacturers such as Novelis, whose plant in Cheshire can produce enough aluminium to make more than seven billion drinks cans a year.

After being separated from the tins, plastic bottles are further sorted by Grosvenor using a high-tech colour sorter into clear, coloured and opaque bottles. They are put into bales and transported to companies who make plastic raw materials and products.

Recycled PET, the plastic which comes from lemonade bottles, can be recycled to make polyester, used for fleece jackets such as those from clothing manufacturer Patagonia.

How much waste do you recycle? Add your comment

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