HWRC Recyclate destinations

What happens to the material collected from my Household Waste Recycling Centre?Car batteries

Morecambe Metals colelct these. The plastic is ground up into granules which are used for many things. Lead is melted down to go back to the battery industry, lead for roofs and X-Ray shielding for hospitals. Acid is neutralised. Distilled water is purified and sent for re-use.

Cardboard

Stirling Fibres take this, soaking the paper and card to pulp, to be turned back into more cardboard for boxes and packaging.

Clothing and shoes

Sent to Cookstown Textile Recycling. The materials are sold through charity shops, or are sent to developing countries for reuse. Low quality textiles that can`t be reused this way are reprocessed into filling or cleaning cloths. Wool can be recovered and re-spun.

Drinks cartons

Tetra Pak at Wrexham recycle these into cardboard boxes and office supplies.

Dirty wood

A W Jenkinson of Carlisle process this - sending the reults for chipboard manufacture or to the power station at Lockerbie as fuel.

Fluorescent tubes

Wiser recycling of Cambridge separate the glass and metal end caps, cleaning off the mercury and phosphor dust. Glass from office lamp tubes goes to the lamp manufacturers in mainland Europe. The glass from sunbed lamps is turned into aggregate. The metal is sent to metal merchants for recycling, and the mercury and phosphor dust goes to a UK distillation plant to be recovered for reuse.

Fridges and freezers

Sims of Newport separate the plastic and metal for recycling, and extract the CFCs (chlorofluorocarbon gases) to BOC. The insulating foam has to go to landfill.

Gas bottles

These are returned to the original company for refilling.

Glass bottles and jars

Valpak at Workington and British Glass at Alloa take this material. It is crushed, separated from any metal or plastic caps/lids, then re-melted to create new glass containers. Some is ground down into "Glassphalt" for roads and carparks.

Wood - good quality

A W Jenkinson sort this and sell it on to chipboard manufactureres.

Green garden waste

SITA in kendal, A W Jenkinson in Carlisle and Thompsons of Maryport take this. It is stacked in piles and turned regularly until it is composted. The result is sold through retail DIY stores.

Gypsum - plasterboard

.. goes to Nutramulch in Leeds and Hamiltons of East Lothian. There it can be used to make new plasterboard, as an ingredient in cement, to make bricks, and to improve soil quality.

Rubble and soil

WRG - Barrow; Neil Price - Barrow; L & W Wilkinson - Cumbria and CWM - Cumbria.

These companies use it to restore landfill sites or build roads on landfill sites.

Large domestic appliances

Morecambe Metals recover any scrap metal. Cumbria Recycling Ltd. of Workington repair some items for resale. Items that aren`t repairable are broken down into component parts and the resulting material sold on to merchants.

Paint

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Paper and magazines

Stirling Fibres of Deeside turn this into pulp which is remanufactured into newsprint, cardboard, tissue and office stationery.

Tyres

Envirotyre of Durham take these - half is made into carpet underlay and the remaining half is shredded as fuel in Lafarge Cement kilns, Scotland.

Plastic

J E Young, Rowdens, C K Polymer all take this material. Plastic bottles are shredded into flakes, washed, dried and melted into pellets which are sold on to the plastic industry.

Household batteries

G & P Batteries, Derbyshire recover the component parts for reuse into more batteries, mostly within the UK

Asbestos

This material has to go to landfill.

Metal

This is taken by Moss Bay Metal and Mountelm of Cumbria, and by Morecambe metals. They package it up and send it to EMR of Liverpool to separate the material and process them for reuse by the metal industry

Oil

Waste Oil Ltd boil this and leave it to settle. Water is removed and the oil is filtered. The result is used as an alternative to ordinary fuel in power stations, heating tarmac and drying stone at quarries. Some is landfilled or incinerated.

Drinks cans

Cans are sorted into different metal types, baled and crushed into large bales. They are melted to remove any ink and coatings before rolling into ingots. The resulting ingots are sold to manufacturers all over Europe.