Post recycling
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Ever wondered what happens to recyclables after you put them in your household recycling bin?
Once your recycle bin is emptied, recyclables are taken to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF).
Recyclable materials are then separated and sorted through a number of automated and manual processes. Find out more about the journey of recyclables.
What happens next?
Separated materials are treated in a number of different ways:
Steel
Steel tins are baled and sold to recyclers to be made back into steel products and packaging. Steel is ‘detinned’ to remove the thin layer of tin. Steel is then heated using a furnace and mixed with other recycled scrap metal.
The melted product is then poured into casters to make ingots. Steel is 100 per cent recyclable so these recycled steel ingots can be used to make new car bodies, cans, aerosols, bikes, BBQs, furniture and whitegoods.
Aluminium
Aluminium cans and aerosols are baled and sent to a processing plant, where they are heated and melted in a furnace.
The liquid metal is cast into ingots that are then rolled into sheets in a mill and sent to the manufactures to be made back into aluminium products such as can, aerosols, bikes, cars and even planes. Recycled aluminium is just as good quality as aluminium made straight from bauxite and is more environmentally friendly.
Glass
Glass is stockpiled and transported to a glass beneficiation plant where the glass is scanned for any impurities and carefully sorted. Sorting removes items such as pyrex, ceramics, china, bone, oven proof glass and any other products that will not melt down.
Once melted down, the sorted glass is mixed with cullet (crushed glass) for remoulding back into the new bottles and jars. Glass can take up to 1000 years to breakdown in landfill but recycling glass only requires only 40 per cent of the energy necessary to make glass from sand.
Plastic
Plastic is baled and sent to recycling plants where it is shredded into small pieces and then washed. A floatation process separates plastics that may be mixed together due to lids being left on the products. Plastic is melted and stretched into strands, cooled, and cut into pellets or ground into powder.
The plastic pellets and powders are sent to manufactures to be moulded and cast back into plastic products and packaging. Recycled plastic is used to make new bottles and containers, wheelie bins, guideposts, fence pickets, irrigation pipes and fleece jumpers.
Paper and cardboard
Baled paper and cardboard is delivered to a recycling plant where it is shredded and mixed with water at high speed to create paper fibres. The pulp is passed through cleaning and screening equipment to remove plastic, dirt and staples and then heated to remove ink and glue and is treated with chemicals and heated to loosen the ink. The cleaned pulp is diluted with water and mixed with smaller amounts of paper making additives.
The paper is then turned into new paper and cardboard products. Recycled paper and cardboard can be used to make packaging, industrial paper, tissues, newspapers, insulations, kitty litter and moulded cartons for eggs and fruit.