Ealing’s new recycling and rubbish collection service will start on 6 June and the way that residents will be asked to recycle is changing, too. It will be easier because recycling will get sorted by technology after you put it out.
Once the new service is under way, residents will be asked to put all of their recycling together in the blue wheelie bin, except for food waste which will still go in the small green bin.
The recycling will then be taken from Greenford Reuse and Recycling Centre to an ultra-modern materials recycling facility (MRF) in Crayford, Kent. The council has appointed Viridor Waste Management to transport and process the borough’s recycling there.
Take a look at the video above from Viridor to get an insider’s view of one of its MRFs in action.
As you can see, at the MRF your recycling will be sorted and separated using a range of mechanical and manual processes that includes the use of magnets, gravity, puffs of air and optical eyes to distinguish between the different types of plastic. At the end of the process, the different types of materials are bundled and sold on to be made into new products.
Last year, residents across the borough sent a total of more than 21,000 tonnes of recycling for reprocessing – which represented 45% of the household waste collected in the borough. The council has a target of recycling 50% of all its waste by 2018 and the move to a new collection system is expected to help meet that target.
This is the first time that mixed recycling will be collected on a borough-wide scale and is a big shift away from the separated collections that currently take place.
For more information
- Ealing Council’s new rubbish and recycling service
- Stay up to date with changes as they happen, on the Facebook page.
