JOURNEY OF WHAT GOES IN THE BLUE RECYCLE BIN
Newspapers, drinks cans, cardboard, how do these items make it back to the shop
IN the Blochairn Recycling Centre the lorries come in with tonnes of material from blue bins. They are collected from households and from the street bins where people are told to put in paper, card, plastic bottles and aluminium cans.
The centre should be a money spinner for the city with current market rates for recyclable aluminium at as much as £1000 a tonne.
Valuable income for a cash strapped council like Glasgow.
But as is often the case with waste disposal and recycling in Glasgow there is a problem.
While waste is separated from recyclable materials, the wrong items contaminate the rest of the contents and it can make it not only worthless but costly.
In the overall recycling market the amount of cash the city earns from selling material on can be knocked out by the price it has to pay to get the contaminated material processed.
It makes the need to put the right rubbish into the right bin all the more important.
When the blue bins are collected, they go to Blochairn and are tipped into a huge pile.
The pile is then put through a series of conveyor belts using sensors, magnets and electrical currents which separates out the different materials.
Magnets pick out steel cans, electric currents detect and “ping off” aluminium cans.
Light sensors identify plastic bottles and separate plastic milk bottles and clear plastics. They are pinged off into separate drums.
It is all about getting the right material to the right processor and minimising the cost to the council and therefore the taxpayer.
David McCulloch, Glasgow City Council group manager for waste and recycling, explains. He said: “We make money from it. But if it’s not good quality it costs us money.”
And when the sums are balanced, it can cost the council money overall.
He said: “Plastic bottles, cans and cardboard are the big-ticket items.”
But, he said, one food item can contaminate the whole bin and the contents go into the waste pile.
At the end of the sensor process a team or around a dozen staff are working the conveyor belts picking out any cardboard, plastics and paper that was missed.
It moves pretty fast so the staff have to be nimble and eagle eyed.
Ian Mulgrew, supervisor, said: “It’s a hard job.”
He isn’t kidding.
I stood at the belt and watched it move past for around a minute then stepped back. It is a strange disorienting sensation and that’s only after a minute. The lighting is not good either and it’s a difficult environment to work in.
As the belt goes by, we can see some of the materials put in the blue bin that obviously shouldn’t be.
There are nappies, face masks, wet wipes and paper soaked with wet food or drink.
This causes a problem. It contaminates the potentially valuable recyclable material and increases the waste pile for incineration or landfill.
When the blue bin material has been sorted at Blochairn it is split into waste, cardboard, mixed plastics, newspapers, mixed paper aluminium and tin. Then the paper, plastics and cans are baled for sending to processors.
The processors turn it into new material and sell it back to the market.
For aluminium cans the bales are transported to a processing plant where they are melted and formed into blocks which are then rolled out into aluminium sheets.
This is then able to be turned into products like drink cans or foil trays for ready meals and put back on the shop shelves and the journey begins again.
The paper and card are sold and sent to Smurfit Kappa in the Southside where it is treated and broken down into raw materials to be used in the firm’s paper mills to produce card and paper, which is then sold back on to the market as recycled paper and card.
We make money from it. But if it’s not good quality it costs us money