A tour of the dump!? A tour of the dump?! My sister repeated. Why?
Firstly, it’s not a dump. It’s a Material Recycling Facility – as I learnt on the tour. This was an opportunity our local council had offered, in order to learn more about how rubbish is recycled and sold off.
We (hi-vis) suited and (steel-toe-cap) booted ready for the tour. Although it didn’t smell as much as I was imagining, it did have a distinct aroma! The plant had been turned off for lunch and we were told that during operating hours it would be SO LOUD.
We walk through different areas for the various materials. The rubbish that comes in is sorted through various stages until one load is completely plastic, aluminum, cardboard and so on. I must admit that I thought the majority of this would have been hand-picked but no, they have some seriously amazing machinery here. The one I was most impressed with was used when almost all of the material was sorted down. The conveyabelt was holding cardboard, yet was able to tell when a stray piece of plastic had got in to the mix and a jet of air SHOT it off in to oblivion! Incredible.
Of course, there are manual hands involved, mainly at the end of the process. Men (as in humans, not just male men!) pick off the last stray items from various belts. Picking out, for example, aerosols which are aluminum but with plastic lids. They also sort pick out items that shouldn’t be there at all. It was crazy, some of the rogue items we were shown. These were mainly scrap that should go to the dump. Don’t be lazy, people! Sort your recycling.
As we went along, we picked up these tips. Remember, these are specific to our borough but can be transferred if you are recycling these items in your community:
- Black. Plastic. This isn’t recycled here or anywhere else in the UK because it’s composition makes it EXTREMELY hard to do so. Avoid buying items that include this.
- Lids on plastic bottles are not as bad as we were led to believe. It’s not the end of the world if these end up in your recycling, it’s just that they are more valuable to your local school/charity/hospital/whoever is collecting these for profit. If you do leave lids on bottles in your blue bin though, puncture them so that the machine can effectively crush them.
- NO hand wash pumps (from hand soap bottles etc) or spray heads (from cleaning products): the bottles themselves can be recycled but the pumps and sprays should go to specialized drop off points at other venues – watch this space!
- NO plastic bags …but it is SO important to take them to your local supermarket’s recycling point instead of throwing them in to landfill. Be proactive. Save the oceans. Save the animals!
- FOIL comes in tiny pieces so make a ball of if you can, grouping multiple pieces together. This helps the machinery identify it.
- Break boxes down to help you save space and fit more recycling in, yay!
At the end of the tour we saw the clean and sorted barrels tied up ready for sale. We learnt that the clear plastic ones fetched £400 per ton and the less valuable aluminum ones £50 per ton. And then suddenly, I realized that although recycling this material is better than having it thrown in to landfill or polluting our seas, the only reason this facility exists is because of business. Business = money. Why are we putting all this effort in to recycling when we should be cutting down the use of plastic instead?
And so, my focus has changed a little:
RECYCLE materials like cardboard and paper that you ‘must’ use
REPLACE plastics with other, more environmentally friendly plastics
REUSE so that items aren’t thrown away after a single use
Mainly – USE LESS PLASTIC! And now I find myself on a mission to do this. Hold on, while I research the quickest way to become an eco warrier 😉
To be continued!
