What Happens to Your Recycling?

Your recycling goes through a series of steps that separate the materials into their family groups. To find out how it happens, read on or click on the link below to watch our brand new video reveal all:

Video - What happens to my recycling?

Collection
Mixed recycling from your green box and recycling bag is collected and taken to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) to be sorted.

Remove small items
At the MRF, the mixed recycling goes into a huge spinning drum, where small items like bottles and cans drop through holes, leaving behind mostly paper and card.

Remove steel and plastic
The recycling moves along a series of conveyor belts, where magnets are used to separate steel cans from aluminium cans and high pressure jets of air separate plastic bottles.

Removal of other waste
The final stage removes items which have been put into the recycling by mistake, such as milk and juice cartons and clothing.

Storage
The sorted recycling falls off the end of the conveyor belt into storage bays.

Baling
The sorted materials are baled and sent off to be made into something new.

 

 

What Happens Next?

Once the material is sorted, it is sent to recycling companies to be turned into new products. Some of these recycling markets are in the UK (such as for steel and aluminium cans, for example) while some of them are overseas and in the Far East.

Why overseas?
The recycling gets sent to where there is a reliable and financially sound market for the materials. At present, much of the manufacturing industry that the UK relies on is in the Far East and therefore, some of the material has to be sent there. The material gets turned into a vast range of products, from kitchen appliances, to toys, clothes and packaging.

How do I know it gets recycled?
Both the government’s Environment Agency and the North London Waste Authority, who make arrangements for disposing of Islington's waste and for recycling the mixed recyclable waste that we collect, audit what happens to our recycling on a regular basis. The companies who sort and recycle the waste operate under strict environmental controls and evidence to demonstrate where all the material is recycled must be available for inspection by the North London Waste Authority and Environment Agency at any time.