Waste and Recycling

What happens to your recycling

You’re working hard recycling all those items but what happens to them once we’ve picked them up? Well, they all go to EnviroSort at Norton, near Worcester, which is operated by Severn Waste Services. Here, your recyclable material is sorted, baled and sent to UK based companies who process them further or reprocess them to make a new product. Here is what happens with each material (information was first published in September 2021).

Food and drink cans

Cans which have been sorted by machinery at EnviroSort, are sent to several different companies within the UK including Clearpoint Recycling Ltd and Alutrade Ltd who are metal brokers. Alutrade Ltd also recycle aluminium cans at their Oldbury site. Recycled steel is used in anything from new cars to bridges and of course new drinks cans. Aluminium cans, as well as being reprocessed into new cans, could also end up in cars and aeroplanes amongst other things.

Mixed glass bottles and jars

Glass is broken up into something called cullet and sent to URM UK Ltd in Tilbury. This company is the largest purchaser and recycler of glass. It is used to produce new glass bottles and aggregates for road construction.

Plastic bottles and containers

The sorted plastics, sorted by machinery at EnviroSort, are baled and sent to either Redland (a broker that buys and sells plastics), PMK Ltd or Monoworld Recycling.

Redland sell on to Clear Tec and both they, PMK and Monoworld, reprocess the plastic further.

Following three separate stages, the plastics are turned into pellets or flakes ready to be used again in the manufacture of new plastic products. Recycled plastic is used in numerous products from garden furniture to pipes and even clothing.

Paper

Paper, cardboard and cartons, sorted at EnviroSort, are sent to either Clearpoint Recycling, Recycling UK, Eurokey Recycling, Edwards Recycling or PMK. These companies source paper, cardboard and cartons to supply the paper mills. Recycled paper has many uses such as newspapers, books and boxes for board games.

All this from your recycling. Thank you for making a difference

Why can’t we recycle black plastic?

Black plastic is often used by companies because it allows colours or imperfections to be masked. Unfortunately, that then means it becomes invisible to sorting machinery widely used in the UK to sort plastics, including here in Worcestershire. Plastics are sorted by a machine called an optical sorter. This system uses lights and sensors housed above the conveyor belt to constantly monitor the flow of plastics passing underneath. The sensor compares the light reflected off the plastic item to data it holds to identify the type of plastic, before ejecting it off the belt with compressed air. Black plastic absorbs the light instead of reflecting it back, so the object isn’t recognised. Try to avoid buying products containing black plastic if you can.

Your black bin waste goes to the EnviRecover Plant at Hartlebury. This was built specifically so your rubbish could be diverted from landfill and instead used as a fuel source for electricity generation.

Every year the Plant deals with 170,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste from homes across Herefordshire and Worcestershire and another 30,000 tonnes of waste from businesses.

To ensure maximum efficiency when waste first arrives at EnviRecover, it is mixed to ensure it burns evenly. This is because some items have a higher energy value when burnt than others. For example, plastic burns more easily than food waste.

It is then put onto the grate where it is burnt to heat water to generate steam, which then powers the turbine creating electricity.

If you would like to know more about the process in detail then you can read more on our website.

Disposing of our waste in this way has several environmental benefits including:

• The Plant generates enough electricity to power about 38,000 homes.
• It removes the need to burn 90,000 tonnes of coal, or 40,000 tonnes of gas which would otherwise be needed to generate the same amount of power annually.
• We are sending hardly anything to landfill. In fact, every year, the waste the Plant diverts from landfill would fill the Royal Albert Hall seven times over or 242 Olympic swimming pools.
• Water used to create steam is condensed and reused in the process.
• Ash generated at the end of the burning process is separated off-site for recycling into aggregate and building material.
• Ferrous and non-ferrous metals are removed from the ash and recycled.
• Emissions from burning the waste are strictly controlled to keep them within the safe levels set by the Environment Agency.

So do we no longer need to worry about recycling? The short answer is absolutely not. The three Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle – remain as important as they ever were and we need to do much more to eliminate waste in the first place and push our recycling level to 50% and above.

Critics of Energy from Waste Plants like EnviRecover claim they encourage waste, as a certain amount of rubbish needs to be burnt in order to make them viable. However, there are two important reasons why this doesn’t make sense – cost and environmental impact.

Firstly, it still costs Worcestershire County Council – and thereby all of us as council taxpayers – money to dispose of waste using the Energy from Waste Plant. In fact, the county council spends more than £33 million a year dealing with our waste. So it doesn’t make financial sense to encourage people to keep generating lots of waste, regardless of how we dispose of it. If we can reduce our waste to a minimum in the first place we can free that money up to be spent on other key services like adult social care and highways.

Secondly, to ensure our planet is sustainable we need to move to a closed-loop system of waste management, known as the circular economy. Put simply, we need to use less (reduce), ensure we use products more than once (reuse) or find other uses for them (recycle).

If we were to just abandon recycling and move to a complete system of energy recovery that would generate more demand for virgin material leading to all the associated environmental impacts in terms of quarrying, water and air contamination as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The resources themselves would also run out more quickly.

Many of you have asked us about how your non-recyclable waste is disposed of and hopefully this information has been useful to you. However, please do not stop the amazing efforts you are making to reduce your waste and increase your recycling.

In accordance with Section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 - Environmental Protection (Duty of Care) Regulations 1991 – Commercial Waste
Malvern Hills District Council would like to draw your attention to the above regulations that impose upon both yourself as the producer of waste, and ourselves as carriers of waste, a Duty Of Care. A summary of the Duty of Care has been reproduced below.
The Duty of Care requires you to:

1. Provide safe storage of waste in containers that are robust/secure enough to prevent spillage, waste blowing away or being scavenged, especially when left outside premises awaiting collection.
2. Ensure that waste is disposed of only by an authorised contractor. Malvern Hills District Council, acting as the Waste Collection Authority, is a registered waste carrier. If you use an alternative contractor you must ensure that person is registered as a carrier by seeing his registration certificate.
3. Prevent any other person committing an offence by disposing of your waste either without a licence or in a manner likely to cause pollution or harm to health.
4. Provide a written description of the waste sufficient to prevent its mismanagement by the receiver. The European Waste Classification (EWC) requires each waste type to be assigned a separate 6 digit code. There are 20 categories and over 800 sub-categories, however, most of the waste collected will be Municipal and will be included within the codes contained on the form. If you are unable to identify your waste type, please contact us for advice.
5. Hazardous Waste: We are not able to collect items such as televisions, computer screens, fluorescent tubes, plasterboard, microwave ovens and other electrical goods that may contain hazardous components.
6. Complete an online transfer note for all waste transferred onwards, i.e. to the collectors.
7. Keep all records (including Transfer Notes) for at least three years and provide copies if requested by any waste regulation authority.

For a property having a regular collection of the same type of waste, this Transfer Note will cover collections for one year from the dates specified on the Transfer Note. If the type of waste or any other details related to the collection alter in any way a new transfer note must be completed.

The recycling bins are available in 3 sizes, compact, standard and large, the dimensions of each are shown below.

Order, replace or change the size of your recycling bin

More information is available on using the recycling service and/or requesting assistance moving your bin to the inside edge of your property for collection.

Repairs and replacements are normally free of charge, however we reserve the right to charge where loss or damage has been caused deliberately.

The compact bin:

• Capacity: 180 litres or 39.59 gal
• Height: 1054 mm or 41.5 in
• Width: 560 mm or 22 in
• Depth: 643 mm or 25.32 in (inc handles)

The standard bin:  

• Capacity: 240 litres or 52.79 gal
• Height: 1063 mm or 41.85 in
• Width: 720 mm or 28.35 in
• Depth: 722 mm or 28.43 in (inc handles)

The large bin:

• Capacity: 360 litres or 79.19 gal
• Height: 1095 mm or 43.11 in
• Width: 850 mm or 33.47 in