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WHERE DOES MY RECYCLING TAKEN?
Green Recycling collects bags which residents leave for kerbside
recycling collection. We then deliver these materils to our Materials
Recovery Facility or MRF (pronounced 'merf') in Halifax Road, Bunbury.
Once sorted for quality and separated, the recyclable commodities
are transported to various other recycling plants for further processing
and eventual recycling.
WHERE DOES MY RECYCLING END UP? |
| Newspaper |
 Newspaper
is separated by other non-recyclable paper such as writing paper and
magazines and then compressed into bales. These bales are loaded into
sea containers and exported to a paper mill in Indonesia where it
is considered to be high grade paper. Because paper is derived from
trees, the newspaper can be reconverted into pulp to make a fresh
batch of newprint.
However there are restrictions to recycling newsprint. The age
of the paper is a major factor, as once the fibres in recycled paper
are reused they become weaker and will disintegrate until it is
no longer possible to reuse. Therefore, there is a limit to how
many times paper can be recycled. Further problems arise if the
newsprint is contaminated with food scraps or dirt, as it
is impossible to recycle for it affects the pulping process. It
is also essential that newspaper is sepatated from glossy magazines
and other paper types as each grade is produced differently therefore
require different recycling treatments.
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PET & HDPE |
| PET, commonly konw as soft drink bottles is transproted
by road to Coca-Cola Amatil in Preston, NSW while HDPE, ie. milk and
juice bottles, is sent to Action Products in Acacia Ridge, Qld or
exported to China. The plastics are intensively cleaned and melt-filtered
restoring them to pristine condition. They are then churned out in
flake or pellet form depending on their proposed end use or requirement
ranging from wheelie bins to shopping bags. PET can now also be turned
back into soft drink bottles over and over again. |
| Liquid Paperboard |
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 Liquid
Paperboard, or milk and juice cartons, are baled and sent to Korea
where the cartons are debaled and placed with water in a machine
called a hydrapulper. Here, the cartons are broken up and the plastic
separates from the paper fibres. The fibres are extracted and can
then be used to make high quality recycled office and copy paper.
About 5 sheets of office paper can be made from one recycled milk
or juice carton.
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| Aluminum Cans |
 Aluminium
cans, once collected are sorted, crushed then baled. These bales are
collected by Simsmetal who are located in Spearwood, WA, where large
furnaces heat the bales to about 700 degrees celsius. This liquidifies
the aluminium which means it can then be set into ingots ready to
be recycled into aluminium products.
It is essential to the environment that these aluminium cans are
recycled as it only takes 5% of the energy that is normally used
to produce a can from raw materials.
Recycling just 1 tonne of aluminium saves 5 tonnes of non-renewable
aluminuium ore.
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| Steel Cans and Aerosols
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| Steel cans and aerosols are separated from other recyclables
by a large rolling magnet and then compressed in large bricks or bales.
These cans are then collected by BHP Transport on its way to BHP Port
Kembla Steelworks for recycling. Steel cans are coated in a non-toxic
tin, which protect it from corrosion, and this must be removed in
order for the recycling process to be successful.
It is removed by immersion in an alkaline bath and the tin is placed
in cathode where it is later reused. What is left is detinned steel,
which is of suitable quality to be melted down and formed into new
steel. There is no limit to how many times this process can repeated
for the same product.
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| Glass bottles |
 Glass
bottles such as soft drink bottles, wine and beer bottles are sorted
into three separate colours being amber, green and clear. It is transported
in large bins to Australian Glass in Canningvale where the glass is
crushed into fine pieces called cullet. This cullet is melted and
mixed with raw materials to form new glass. Glass can be continually
reused and it is 100% recyclable.
Again the recycling process can be thwarted by the inclusion of
lids from jars and caps from bottles. These must be removed and
other contaminants must be discarded such as ceramics and china
pieces as only 25 grams of this non-recyclable material can contaminate
1 tonne of glass.
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