In Mid Sussex we have blue lidded bins for our materials to be recycled. We can put the following into our bins for recycling:
- Plastic bottles
- Mixed paper & cardboard
- Tetra paks
- Aluminium & steel food & drink cans
- Aluminium foil
- Aerosols
- Glass bottles & jars
Collecting materials together like this is called co-mingled collection.
The bins are emptied into the back of our recycling collection trucks. It is then compacted by the truck - everything is squashed very tightly. This means we get the best capacity out of the truck; it has to make fewer journeys.
Mid Sussex trucks then empty their load at one of West Sussex County Council's Transfer Stations, either at Burgess Hill or East Grinstead. These are big sheds that are licensed to hold waste materials.
Material for recycling is then loaded into much larger trucks for transportation to the Material Recycling Facility (MRF) for sorting.
WSCC have just opened a new MRF at Ford to sort all of the recycling collected by District and Boroughs in West Sussex. Find out more about the new MRF at Ford
Trucks pass over the MRF weigh bridge to record how much material has been brought in. A gate fee is payable to the MRF for taking the material.
Materials are tipped into the unloading area and undergo a visual inspection. At this point major contamination in the load, e.g. lots of garden waste, will be noticed and it may be rejected.
Material is loaded into a big hopper and it is fed into a Trommel. A trommel is a big rotating perforated cylinder, a bit like a huge washing machine drum. Material enters the trommel and is circulated around; it takes about 15 minutes for materials to pass through the trommel.
Flat items such as paper and card pass straight through the trommel.
Glass, which is crushed, due to the compaction in the vehicles, is heavy and passes through the holes in the trommel.
Plastic & cans also fall though holes in the trommel into a piece of equipment called a Ballistic Separator. The small and heavy pieces (glass) fall right through the Ballistic Separator. This gets the glass out of the sorting at the earliest possible stage.
Glass is then carried on a conveyor belt to the glass cleaning unit where small pieces of paper are removed. The crushed clean glass is then ready to be sold on, mainly into the construction industry.
The cans & plastics then travel along a conveyor belt to the automatic sort line where they pass through overband and eddy equipment that uses magnets to sort the aluminium from the steel and plastics.
Aluminium is then baled up ready for sale.
The plastics & steel pass under two TiTech units these separate the materials out, then uses a visual sensor that determines the different grades of plastic and blows them off the belt with a puff of air into the appropriate bay.
At this point a lot of contamination is removed - some small bits and pieces and some larger ones. The smaller pieces will go through the process again as some recyclable bits will have slipped through.
Plastics that can't be recycled are sent to landfill.
A moving floor then carries the materials to the automatic baling equipment.
Paper travels along a conveyor belt where a manual sort takes place, removing materials classed as contamination.
At this point a lot of things are found that shouldn't be in there at all. It's amazing what people put in their recycling bins. Such contamination slows up the whole process and puts at risk the quality of the end material.
Grosvenor have just purchased a new piece of equipment that also sorts out the white paper. A better quality paper can be made from white paper. The machine is automated with a manual sort at the end of the process catching coloured materials the machine has missed.
Paper is then baled up ready to be sold on.
A team of people also work on quality control during the sorting process. They analyse both loads of materials coming into the plant and loads of material leaving the plant. This ensures that quality is maintained. If loads from particular councils are consistently found to be contaminated or of poor quality, the supplier will be informed of the problem. This process also ensures that the quality of separated materials to be sold on is high. This ensures that the highest prices are reached, Grovesnor would one day like to be able to eliminate their gate fee by maintaining high prices for a superior quality end material.
Viridor (who run the MRF for WSCC) take pride in the quality of recycled materials they produce for sale and WSCC will not export unsorted waste material or recyclate. Any recyclate that is exported is sorted in a UK Material Recovery Facility to a high standard of clean recyclate material.
Current end market reprocessing capacity in the UK is limited, and increasing amounts of recyclate are being sought and exported to the rapidly expanding major manufacturing regions of the world like China, who produce a large quantity of plastic goods that we import into the UK.
Exports are highly regulated and monitored and controlled by the Environment Agency in cooperation with the competent environment authorities of destination countries. The West Sussex County Council's contractor Viridor Waste Management is accredited by the Environment Agency as an approved exporter, a status that is subject to rigorous auditing, annual review and accreditation of our operations, documentation audit trail records and all end market reprocessors.
Last updated 21/12/09
Downloads/Links
Refuse & Recycling Service May 08(pdf 678kb) - details of service including what you can put in your bins.
Contacts
Waste Management Team
Email: wastematters@midsussex.gov.uk
Tel: 01444 477440
