Pages in What happens to your recycling
- 1. What happens to your recycling
- 2. What happens to your food recycling
- 3. What happens to your paper and card recycling
- 4. You are here: What happens to your mixed recycling
- 5. What happens to your garden waste
- 6. Recycling textiles and shoes
4. What happens to your mixed recycling
How much mixed recycling do we collect?
In 2020/21 we collected nearly 8,500 tonnes of mixed recycling. This was an increase of 25% compared with 2019/20 due to the pandemic.
Where does your mixed recycling go?
Our contractor, Biffa Waste Services, picks up the material we collect and takes it to their Aldridge Material Recycling Facility to separate out the different materials for onward recycling. In 2020/21 more than 98% of our mixed recycling was processed in the UK as follows:
-
Tins, cans, foil and aerosols are separated into steel and aluminium and recycled into new steel and aluminium products.
-
Glass bottles and jars are separated out for ether smelting into recycled glass bottles or jars, or used as an aggregate in the construction industry.
-
Plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays are sorted into the different polymer types and colour and turned into recycled plastic packaging or plastic based products.
Did you know that Biffa's plastic is used in 8 out of 10 UK plastic milk bottles?
Plastics
Biffa reports sending around 90% by weight of the plastics it separates to companies within the UK for reprocessing into secondary raw materials. The remaining 10% it exports to partners in countries with environmental standards and controls which at least match our own. In a statement from June 2020, Biffa highlights that they do not export plastic waste to Turkey.