Blog – what happens to your recycling?

Shropshire Council and our waste contractor Veolia collect thousands of tonnes of recycling every year and people often ask what happens to the material. As a signatory to the national End Destinations of Recycling Charter we’re keen to highlight what happens to your recycling to show that it all gets recycled into useful items, and mostly in the UK.

Here are a few examples, showing what happens to some of the most popular materials. If you’d like to know more, please visit the waste pages of the Shropshire Council website by clicking here.

Paper goes to UPM Shotton paper mill near Chester where it is pulped and turned into newspapers.

Glass goes to Recresco in Ellesmere Port and INGS for export to Portugal. It is crushed and melted down to make glass bottles.

Cans go to Alu-trade in the West Midlands to be separated magnetically. Steel then goes to AMG in South Wales. Aluminium goes to Novelis in Cheshire. Here they get shredded and melted down to make new cans, fridges, car parts, bicycles and even aeroplanes!

Plastic goes to Jayplas in the midlands, Roydon Polythene in Manchester and Closed Loop Recycling Ltd. in London. It gets separated into different types which can be used to make fleeces, water butts, drainage pipes and more plastic packaging.

Garden waste goes to local farms in Shropshire. It is shredded, composted and spread on the land as a soil improver.

Cardboard goes to Oswestry Waste Paper. It is baled and sold on to various reprocessors including Smurfitt-Kappa paper mill in Birmingham who make cardboard packaging.

So you can see that your recycling is helping to supply UK manufacturing and supporting jobs in industry.

With your help, more than half of Shropshire’s household waste is recycled. Thank you for your efforts, and please keep up the good work!