The Twin Bin scheme has already helped us increase our recycling from 18% to 27% but there's far more to recycling than simply meeting targets.

Recycling has become a vital source of raw materials for manufacturing and reduces the need for ‘virgin’ resources such as trees and oil which is vital in these times of dramatic environmental and climatic change.  It's absolutely vital that you sort your recycling properly by making sure the right materials go in your recycling bags.  Whole loads of recycling can be rejected if the wrong items are put together or placed in the wrong container.

Your recycling is collected regularly and goes to a materials recovery facility that uses a range of technologies to sort and extract the different items.  These facilities have various markets for all the materials they sort:

• Around 88% of recycling collected at the kerbside is paper and card and this is sold back to paper mills for re-use
• 6% is aluminium or steel cans.  Aluminium is typically recycled into drink containers in the UK.  Steel is supplied to steel works and foundries in the UK and overseas to produce a wide range of products
• The remaining 6% relates to plastics and goes to a wide range of companies and markets.  Recycled plastic is used to produce a variety of items including fleeces, carpets, drainage pipes and kettles.  Whilst all plastics are sent to re-processors in the UK they may in turn supply domestic and international markets.  This is likely to include Asia where the bulk of your plastic products are manufactured.

Whilst it may seem inappropriate to ship materials such long distances there is an enormous amount of shipping capacity back to Asia due to the volume of imported products we receive so the carbon footprint is in fact low.  Exporters of recycled resources are subject to stringent controls and steps are taken to confirm that materials are being recycled.

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