FOLLOW YOUR RECYCLING | A Circular Head Waste Partnership Series
Where does it actually go?
You put your recycling bin out. The truck arrives. Your bin is emptied. But then what?
Earlier this year, through the Circular Head Waste Partnership, we asked our community about waste and recycling.
One of the things you told us was that you weren't always confident that the things you put in your recycling bin were actually being recycled. It's a fair question – and we said we'd share more about where our recycling goes and what happens to it along the way.
So let's start at the kerb.
Your recycling is collected from your kerb and taken directly to the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at Spreyton operated by Veolia. This is where the contents of our recycling bins begin to be sorted into separate materials – including paper and cardboard, different plastics, glass, steel and aluminium.
Once those materials are separated, they can head in different directions, to different processors and different end uses. Some are recycled into new materials and products. Some may be reused for another purpose. And sometimes a recycling pathway can pause, change or even stop altogether.
Recycling depends on having somewhere to process recovered materials and a viable use for them at the other end. Technology, processing capacity and markets can change – which means recycling pathways can change too.
You might remember REDcycle, the supermarket soft-plastics recycling program. It was suspended in 2022 after processing capacity reduced while the amount of soft plastic being collected continued to grow. Without enough capacity to process it, large amounts of material were stockpiled.
It's a good reminder that collecting something for recycling is only one part of the recycling journey.
The good news is that change can work the other way too. New technology, growing markets and increasing volumes of recovered material can create new recycling opportunities.
That's why, through the Circular Head Waste Partnership, we'll be taking a closer look at our current recycling pathways and will share them with you – where different materials go, what happens to them and what they become.
Coming up next: inside the MRF. How does a mixed-up recycling bin get separated back into individual materials?
