Materials recycling facility

1. Collection
Materials collected from households, recycling centres and businesses are transported to our materials recycling facilities and loaded onto a conveyor. Materials that cannot be recycled and items that would harm the process or equipment are removed by hand on the conveyor.

2.Separation
The stream of materials then passes through a trommel and ballistic separator to separate the different recyclables.

Paper
Paper is screened by hand and then baled, ready to be sent to a paper recycling mill.

3. Glass
Glass is passed under a magnet to remove any ferrous metals, screened to remove waste and then sent through an air classifier to remove any light paper. The glass is collected for onward transportation to a glass recycling plant.

4. Metals
Metals are removed using a magnet for ferrous metals (like steel cans) and an eddy current separator for non-ferrous metals (like aluminium cans). These are baled, ready for recycling.

5. Plastics
An optical sorting unit separates out different types of plastics, and plastic bottles then pass along a manual inspection line as a final quality check. The plastics are then baled for transportation to a specialist recycling facility.