What happens to your recycling (and how can you help) …?

A tour of Biffa’s MRF in Edmonton …

Biffa’s Edmonton MRF is a ‘Super murf’. The second largest Material Recyling Facility in the UK, at 35,000 sq m.

It employs over 300 staff across four shifts and processes the contents of the recycling bins of 1.7 million people living in the North London Waste Authority (NLWA) area. And it runs 24/7, only closing for Christmas Day.

Which amounts to 295,000 tonnes per year, or 47 tonnes per hour, we were told by Craig Rattigan, Operations Manager, who took an MHSG tour around the facility in March, followed by a Q&A in their board room. “That’s the equivalent weight of 1,250 Northern Line trains per year”, he told us.

None of these incredible figures could have prepared us, however, for the sight of literal mountains of recycling, relentlessly unloaded onto the tip floor by non-stop dumpers, reduced to Tonka toy proportions, by comparison.

Baleful bales full …

It is a dusty, depressing, dystopian battlefield to waste. A churning, grinding overhead network of hoppers, conveyor belts, sorters and compacters, ferrying and sorting the piles, before spewing out huge bales of separated materials, to be sold on for recycling. Bales which are intermittently quality checked for contaminants, we were assured.

The most valuable are aluminium – the easiest and cleanest material to recycle infinitely, fetching £1,100 per tonne – and glass, which will achieve £35 – £40 per tonne.

Interestingly, while most of the materials remain in the UK – Rattigan was quick to point out – coloured glass, typical of the wine industry, is sent back to Northern Europe for wine bottle reincarnation, for which there is limited demand here at the moment.

All glass is received by “off-takers” (commodities markets) and ‘desharpened’ before reanimation, which can also be as sand to counter beach erosion, or for use in road aggregates.

Meanwhile, Biffa’s plastics bales all remain in the UK for recycling, paper is shipped to Europe and cardboard goes “deep sea” – a somewhat sanitised euphemism for crossing oceans and continents. While the thorny issue of flexible plastics remains just that.

As Rattigan explained, it would cost them £125 per tonne to process. Nevertheless, Haringey Council has announced plans to introduce roadside collection of soft plastics.

It is a sad fact that virgin plastic remains a cheaper option than recycled and, despite evidently unfit-for-purpose legislation requiring manufacturers to include a minimum of 30% recycled plastic in their packaging, some manufacturers are willing to take the financial hit of government fines for using virgin plastic.

Notably Pepsi.

“A sticker on packaging that reads 30% recycled plastic should read”, Rattigan told us “‘we’ve done as little as we could!’”

Divide and conquer …

Edmonton MRF processes paper, card, aluminium, ferrous metals, PET (water bottles), PP (margarine and yoghurt cartons) and HTPE (milk and chemicals bottles) plastic. Each are sorted, sifted and redirected into single material streams by, variously, air ducts (separating lighter materials), vibrations (glass), water (paper), electromagnetic drums (ferrous metals), QR code identification (PET bottles), optical sorters (which identify different densities of plastic via infra-red technology), different sized apertures (card and paper) and …

… and by hand!

This was the next great shocker.

Lines of gloved, masked workers, picking over an unceasing river of waste, pulling out non-recyclates. These include textiles, wet wipes, composites (blister packs, for example, which are not financially viable to separate), electrical wires (which are recycled separately), garden waste and waste contaminated by food, grease … or worse!

A dirty nappy was fished out as we watched, that would have contaminated an entire bale, redirecting 1,500 tonnes of paper to incineration.

This ‘wish-cycling’ retrieval amounts to 22% of Edmonton MRF’s recycling intake ending up being incinerated.

Some MRFs are introducing AI to take on this job, we were told, but not only would it cost between £130-140m to rebuild such an adapted Edmonton facility, but robots cannot spot hidden materials, nor the nuances of different materials. And so, in eight-hour shifts, people pick through an inexorable flow of rubbish, with incredible speed. An unceasing task that Rattigan actually admitted made him feel “sea-sick” when he has joined them.

It is the sobering scene behind your recycling bin fairies …

Asked what his prime policy change would be at a governmental level, Rattigan quickly answered “consistency”. With so many councils operating with different guidelines, collection models and materials accepted, uniformity in our recycling process would vastly improve on efficiency.

In a stunning example of why disunity doesn’t work, in fact, the success of DRS (deposit return schemes) for single use drinks containers in Europe was discussed amongst the group. Rattigan explained that Biffa had spent £14m on winning the Scottish DRS scheme, but it was cancelled by the government because Scotland wanted to include glass returns too.

He is understandably quick to flag up the MRFs wins – the work they have done with the likes of Greggs and Ribena to help them make their packaging more recyclable, for example, and their prioritising of recycling over incineration (you’d hope). But less so on the carbon emissions created by the plant. These were figures that Rattigan couldn’t bring to mind, but assured us that they were published annually. Some deep googling here has so far unearthed none.

But he offered a grain of hope in reporting noticeable reductions in the volume of recycling received by Edmonton MRF, which he puts down to changing consumer behaviours and reductions in packaging.

Which is where our domestic separation efforts come into play.

How can we help …?

Back in the clean calm of the boardroom, divested of our Easyjet-orange safety gear, Rattigan further fielded our concerns about the workforce, defiantly claiming that 50% have been with them for 5 years and over. And offered some less obvious tips for reducing the need for such picking by sorting more knowledgeably and vigilantly at home …

The holy trinity: CLEAN. DRY. SEPARATE …

• Any food debris or grease marks larger than a 50p piece on items put in your recycling will constitute a contaminant and end up being incinerated
• Rinse the worst of food debris and dry containers
• Don’t conceal different materials – a jar inside a box, for example – keep everything separate, so that it is spotted by machinery, technology and manual sorters
• Look for the recycling sign with a number in the middle to identify a recyclant
• Remove the lids from large jars

Non-recyclates that should not go in your recycling bin …

• Textiles (including wet wipes) – charity donation or upcycling is still the best option here. Biffa, in fact, buy in unsellable donations to tear into rags for cleaning their machinery
• Shredded paper, which is too small to be recycled
• Polystyrene (which includes plant pots and CD covers, surprisingly)
• Composite packaging, involving multiple layered materials (such as blister packs) – look to Terracycle for more specialist recycling
• Flexible plastics, including “crinkly” packaging that “bounces back” – all of which should currently be taken to larger supermarket collection points
• Coat hangers

And you don’t have to …

• Remove plastic films from food trays
• Remove lids from smaller jars or bottles (magnets will do this job)
• Remove plastic caps from bottles (infra-red will sense and sort through the higher density of coloured plastic)
• Remove tape from cardboard boxes, nor labels from paper

And finally … the TetraPak conundrum …

The recycling of Tetrapaks – which are fibre composites of paper, plastic and aluminium layers – can be theoretically recycled, and are accepted in kerbside recycling bins by many councils (Haringey included), but the honest response from Craig Rattigan at Biffa is less clear cut …

“Tetrapak and other fibre-composite products are a little confusing … while they are deemed suitable for recycling with us, as we can separate them, due to processing we cannot guarantee the whole product is recycled. This is because our off-takers who recycle our mixed fibre product into paper may not have the ability to separate and recover the plastic and aluminium aspects of the products, so these could end up going to waste.”

He advises that we clean TetraPaks out thoroughly “for the best chance of recovery,” but that we ideally drop them at larger supermarket’s TetraPak-specific collection points, where available.

“Overall, we can accept them, ” Rattigan summarises, “but to guarantee that the whole product is recycled and recovered into new products it would be best to separate them for specialist collection. However, I do understand this is not always feasible with space constraints.” 

Our sincere thanks to Craig Rattigan and the Biffa team for giving us their time and a fascinating tour

Further resources …

London Recycles – for in depth recycling advice and services information

Haringey – for council services and guidelines

Terracycle – for specialist recycling

Biffa – for information on Edmonton MRF