Materials Recycling Facility

The recycling collected from Bracknell Forest, Reading and Wokingham Boroughs is sorted by the Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) at Smallmead Waste Management Park.

Recycling collection vehicles deposit the recycling they have collected in the tipping hall of the MRF.  The first stage of the sorting process is loading the material into the MRF and onto the conveyor belt system.

Often large items of contamination (material that cannot be recycled), can be found in the recycling.  re3 staff working in the pre-sort cabin have the job of removing any large items that they come across.  Items that have been removed in the past include duvets, electrical items, car parts, dirty nappies and dead animals.  If these items are not removed, they can cause damage to the sorting machine.

Once large items of contamination have been removed in the pre-sort cabin, the recycling is sorted by size in the trommel.  As the trommel spins round, recycling falls out of the holes onto a number of conveyor belts.  The disc screen then helps to remove any glass that may have incorrectly been put in recycling bins.  If glass is left in the process, small fragments can contaminate other material streams.  Glass fragments in the paper stream can cause damage to the product in the recycling process.

Small, light fragments of paper are sorted by a vacum (called an air knife) which sucks paper away from other materials.  Food and drinks cans are sorted according to the type of metal they are made from. Steel cans are attracted to a magnet, and aluminium cans are sorted by an eddy current separator.  

Optical sorters allow us to sort the plastic bottles from the paper remaining on the conveyor belts.  A beam of light is used to detect what materials are on the conveyor belt, and jets of air are used to separate different materials.

Plastic bottles, aluminium cans and paper are further sorted by hand in picking cabins.  Typically re3 employ 16 people to work in the picking cabins at any time.  As materials pass through the conveyor belt, it is our staff's job to remove any items that should not be present in a particluar material stream.  A common item of contamination found here is plastic carrier bags and other types of plastic packaging.  These items are removed as contamination.

All the contamination separated by the MRF, is collected and disposed of at a landfill site.

The final stage of the sorting process is to prepare the materials for transport to reprocessors, where the materials will actually be recycled.  Cardboard, steel cans, aluminium cans and plastic bottles are baled before they are sent for reprocessing.  Paper is not baled, and instead is loaded into lorries loose before it is sent for reprocessing.

Illustration of the MRF

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