What happens to waste?

 

What's the difference between putting a glass bottle in your recycling box and recycling bank, or in your general rubbish bin?

 

Let's see what happens to each of them:

 

 A recycled glass bottle

 Glass thrown in the rubbish bin

Your glass bottle is collected from the recycling point

Your bin bags are collected from your doorstep on rubbish collection day

 All glass is taken to a collection depot in Southampton for sorting into different colours

This waste is transported to one of the county's landfill sites where your bin bag, with many others, is dumped onto a large, unsightly mound of rubbish

 Some of the glass will be melted down in the furnace and mixed with raw materials to make new glass bottles. Recycled glass is a key ingredient in this process as it enables the other materials to melt at lower temperatures.

 Your rubbish will stay there forever as glass is not biodegradable and will not decompose

 The rest of the glass is used in water filtration units and even in road building.

 Glass is in theory "infinitely recyclable" and so this is a real waste of valuable resources. New glass bottles contain up to 90% recycled glass.

 

What happens to the other materials you can recycle:

 

Paper collected in Bucks is either sorted at a facility in Amersham and depending on its quality is sold on for recycling into newspaper or corrugated cardboard or sold directly to Aylesford Newsprint in Kent.

 

Plastic is sorted into different types at a Material Recovery Facility. High density plastic is then sent to St Helen's to be made into plastic pipes; the rest is made into bin bags, fleeces, fencing and garden furniture.

 

Cans are sent to Material Recovery Facilities and sorted into steel and aluminium. Steel is sold to Corus (formerly British Steel) and turned into new cans or even cars. Aluminium is sold to Alupro and made into new cans.

 

Green and food waste collected in parts of Bucks is transferred to a new composting facility at High Wycombe, and the resulting compost is used in the local farming network.

 

Textiles collected at recycling banks are sorted into wearable and non-wearable. Items suitable for wearing are sent to developing countries. Any non-suitable clothing is recylced into rags.

 

Further Information

To find out more about what happens to recycled materials, check out these web sites:

  • Waste Online has loads of useful information on the recycling and waste disposal process, and the individual materials you can reyclcle.
  • Aluminium Can Recycling explains the benefits of recycling aluminium.
  • The British Glass explains what happens to the glass bottles and jars you recycle.
  • Corus Group offers factsheets and case studies explaining how steel cans are collected and recycled.
  • PlasticRecycling.info includes downloadable factsheets and educational materials on all aspects of plastics recycling.