What Is Your Waste Recycled Into?

We all know that it’s essential to recycle (and even more important to reuse and remove the need for recycling completely). However, have you ever asked yourself what happens to all the things you recycle after they leave your business premises or house, and what they are tuned into after being recycled? Here is what happens to your waste plus recycling you always put in your rubbish bin.

Cans and Tins

Food tins are usually melted down to create new steel items: parts of bridges, fridges or car parts.

Drink cans are crushed then melted and turned into ingots. They are then sent to can manufacturers. Aluminium is easily recycled, and it never diminishes in quality with every meltdown.

New drinks cans will be available in the shops again ready for you to buy in just six weeks. Also, aluminium cans can be recycled into aeroplane parts, building facades and bicycle parts. Research suggests that 75% of the aluminium that has been produced since the year 1888 is still being used today.

Card and Paper

Paper is sent to the paper mill, pulped down, then moulded into new paper. Typically, your newspaper can return to the news-stand within two weeks time. Cardboard is flattened, folded and recycled to create new packagings like washing powder boxes and cereal boxes.

Recycle Card and Paper Today

• To produce paper, trees must be felled and wildlife habitats that are valuable are lost.
• Card and paper break down at a slow speed in landfill sites, and they produce harmful methane gas.
• It uses less water and energy compared to producing it from new.

Plastics

Plastic bottles are normally cut into flakes, washed, then dried and turned into new products, like wheelie bins, garden furniture and signposts.

Glass Bottles and Jars

These are often washed, crushed, melted and then made into new glass bottles. Also, some of the recycled glasses are ground down and used in making roads.

Black Bin Waste

Waste in your black bin is all sent to a plant, where it’s converted into energy. It’s not taken to a landfill site as it can take many years to decompose. Disposing of waste in that way, black bins contents can generate lots of energy that can power homes throughout the year.

Garden and Kitchen Waste

You can recycle 50% of your garden and kitchen waste by making your compost. A compost is a rich, crumbly and earthlike material that usually forms when carbon-based (organic) materials are broken down by bacteria and worms (biodegrade).

Compost is ideal for use in your garden: it normally returns nutrients to the soil, helping your plants to grow. It’s much cheaper when you make your own compost rather than buying at a garden centre. Moreover, it is better for the environment compared to using peat, which is known to be a threatened habitat.

If you want to make compost, you’ll need a large container or a compost heap in your yard or garden. Composting is much easier when you have a garden compared to having an apartment on the 22nd floor. However, even in cities, there are some authorities who arrange biodegradable collection and make compost in a central area. It can take several months to one year or even more for waste to decompose and turn into compost. Basically, you have to put an equal mix of greens (grass cuttings, dead flowers, vegetable scraps etc) and browns (shredded paper, small twigs, torn up cardboard etc)

Wood

This traditional, sustainable material has been used by people since human history. Usually, waste wood is made into new wooden products like garden decking and recycled wooden flooring. Old wooden railroad sleepers, which are now being replaced by concrete) are at times used as building timbers, especially in gardens and homes. Also, waste wood can be shredded, stuck together with adhesives and make composite woods like laminates. Additionally, it can be composted or even burned as a fuel.

Oil

Waste oil from car and lorry engines cause immense environmental problems if you pour it into your drainage system. It pollutes our seas and rivers, the wildlife that often depends on them as well as the water that we drink. If you choose to take your waste oil to a recycling centre, it will not only keep the waterways clean, but it can also be reprocessed and turned into new products like heating oil. Your waste vegetable oils (for example, made by frying food) can be made into a useful type of vehicle fuel known as biodiesel.

If everyone reduced, reused as well as recycled, we could make the resources of the Earth go an awful much further. The benefits of recycling include saving materials, reducing the need for land filling and incinerating, cutting down pollution plus helping to make our environment more attractive. Furthermore, it creates jobs since recycling things take a little more effort compared to making new things.