After seeing an advertisement on our local council’s website recruiting residents with an interest in recycling, I sent in one of my blogs on plastic and applied. I was called and offered more details, which resulted in me finding myself en route to the region’s Material Recycling Facility (aka ‘MRF’, but definitely not ‘dump’, which I referred to it as on the phone!) on a Monday morning.
Upon arrival I found BBC staff and producers sitting with the dump (facility!) staff discussing confusion around plastics. ‘I am all over this’, I thought. ‘I can help them here’. But then, the word polymer came up and that you should ignore the plastic grading on packaging and … oh. I am not a recycling guru after all. There is so much to be learnt!
The BBC team had spent the morning with another resident, Sue, and I was now to join her on a tour of the facility. We donned hard hats, steel toe caps and florescent jackets. A lovely look for TV.
I was expecting noise, smell and dust. It was a little dusty but mainly overwhelmingly HUGE. There. Is. So. Much. STUFF. Here!
We were walked around the different processes, quizzing our guide on why there were so many plastic bags, plastic film and bottles with plastics lids on, since the council didn’t recycle them. This is something the facility is struggling with conveying. Don’t put them in! Plastic bags are the biggest problem since residents use them to store other recycling. They tie up the bags and the machines can’t see through them. They did mention that if they end up here it is fine since the staff can and will remove it, but these items are better placed with supermarkets (plastic bag collection) and charity and school collections (bottle tops) since they solely collect these items. Still not sure why that is…! Anyway, sort your recycling, people.
We were extremely impressed by the level of technology used here. Machines developed just for sorting recycling, wow. The best one we saw in action was the (technical term) ‘cardboard conveyor belt’ which used weight to identify and then air to shoot rouge pieces of plastic off of the conveyor belt and in to oblivion. Amazing!
The biggest revelation for silly, close-minded, eco-friendly me was that obviously this is a business. Whilst smugly placing the items in to my recycling bin at home I had visions of newly made coathangers trundling out of the facility. The reality is that because plastic is so lucrative (especially clear grade plastic) there is money to be made and that is where the interest comes from. This has stuck in my mind since and I realise now that ideas and efforts towards getting people and businesses behind this need to shift to adhere to this, for better results.
A couple of days later I was ready to watch BBC News for my TV debut. Disappointingly – although perhaps not so disappointingly having seen myself in that hat! – I was shown for only a couple of seconds. Impressively, a few friends managed to spot me on there!
What stood out most though, is that after all the time that the BBC spent that day listening to how confused the public is over recycling, they didn’t focus on clearing any of that up. The clip showed the difference in recycling between different boroughs but didn’t give any information further to that. It is great to highlight the confusion, but we need to help solve it as well.
I understand that this is best done locally and so I have left there with a strong mindset on how to do this. I am thinking more clarity, lists of ‘yes’ on your recycling bins, a map of additional recycling banks in your county and a forum to ask for recycling clarification. As well as that, let’s cut down on the amount of plastic used. A vast amount of items I saw there just do not need to be in production.
Something I was very impressed with was how keen our council is to recycle and convey messages over recycling. With bigger bodies such as this coming on board, change will happen.
The day was informative. The outcome – not so much. But I met some very like-minded people who can help drive this mission.
Watch this space, I guess!
——————————————————————————————————
Recycling Facility Tours for my borough (Bracknell/Reading/Wokingham) are organised directly here. Check your local facility to see if they offer the same. I REALLY recommend these!
