Recycling

What is recycling?

Recycling rubbish uses a physical process to turn an item of rubbish either into the same item or a new item. For example a newspaper can be turned into a new newspaper or animal bedding.

Why is it important to recycle?

It is important to recycle rubbish so that our valuable resources are not lost. For example, there is only a fixed amount of aluminium metal in the world. It is very expensive and environmentally damaging to mine this metal, so it is important both for the environment and the economy that we recycle as much of this rubbish as possible, for example, drinks cans.

It is even better not to produce the rubbish in the first place (have a look at our reduce pages), but if the rubbish has been created, recycle it if possible.

Why can't you recycle all rubbish?

Some items of rubbish have the recycling symbol on them, but we don't collect the items for recycling here in Plymouth. This is either because the recycling process itself would be too expensive or the nearest reprocessing factories are a long way away or even abroad, which would mean high transportation costs that outweigh the value of the recyclable materials.

We are always looking to see if we can collect more types of rubbish for recycling, but we have to weigh up the costs and the environmental benefits.

What happens to the recyclable waste?

All of the recyclable waste collected from Plymouth residents and businesses is taken to Chelson Meadow, where we sort it using machinery and people. It goes on a giant conveyor belt; our Materials Recycling Facility (MRF). Once it is sorted, the materials are sold to selected contractors for reprocessing at their recycling plants.