WHY DO WE RECYCLE?

​Recycling is essential for several key reasons:

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1. Environmental Protection: Recycling helps reduce the need for raw materials, conserving natural resources like timber, minerals, and water. This minimises habitat destruction, pollution, and the energy required to extract and process these materials.

2. Waste Reduction: By diverting materials from landfills, recycling decreases the volume of waste that ends up in landfills, which overflow and lead to harmful emissions, from pollutants in the air when material is burned to toxicity of the ground and groundwater from harmful leaching.

3. Energy Savings: Recycling often uses less energy compared to producing new products from raw materials. For example, recycling aluminum saves up to 95% of the energy required to make it from bauxite ore.

4. Economic Benefits: Recycling creates jobs in collection, sorting, processing, and selling recycled materials. It also supports the development of a circular economy where materials are reused rather than discarded.

5. Climate Change Mitigation: By lowering greenhouse gas emissions associated with manufacturing and waste disposal, recycling helps combat climate change and its impacts.

 

In essence, recycling is a crucial practice for preserving the environment, conserving resources, and supporting sustainable economic growth.

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HOW DO WE RECYCLE?

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Recycling involves several key steps to transform waste materials into new products. Here’s a brief overview of the complete recycling process; we're responsible for steps 1 and 2.:

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1. Collection and Sorting: Recyclable materials are collected through our weekly trailer collections and scheduled visits to local businesses, or are dropped off at our centre in the Bushmans Industrial area. Once collected/received, these materials are manually sorted by type (e.g., paper, plastic, metal, glass).

2. Cleaning and Preparation: Whilst we prefer to receive material that is already rinsed clean, there is always material that comes to us dirty so we do our best to clean it, and carry out checks to ensure that there is no contamination. The materials are then put into our H20 baler by type, or crushed and bagged if it is glass, in preparation for transportation to a processing facility.

3. Processing: The cleaned materials are then processed into new forms. This can involve melting plastics and metals to create pellets or sheets, pulping paper to create new paper products, or crushing glass to produce cullet for use in manufacturing.

4. Manufacturing: The processed materials are used as raw materials to create new products. For instance, recycled paper is used to make new paper products, recycled plastic can be turned into clothing or containers, and recycled glass is used to produce new bottles or jars.

5. Distribution: The newly manufactured products are then distributed to consumers or businesses. By incorporating recycled materials into production, companies reduce the demand for virgin resources and help close the recycling loop.​​