Recycling bottle tops

[bcuster]

My main concern is the habitual rinsing of recyclables with fresh water. This is a waste of the world’s most precious and scarce resource, potable water…

 

[cupid_stunt]

See edit; I think it's just telling you where materials are going once graded and sorted. So there's a facility somewhere in the UK that recycles mixed plastics, and they can send that there, but it gives no indication of what percentage of collected waste is too contaminated to meet that grade.

I don't think much is too contaminated when it arrives at Ford MRF, I've seen West Sussex CC reports that say around 80k tonnes are collected at the kerbside, and total sold on from the MRF is listed as 76596.46 tonnes.

I know the Ford MRF is one of the most advanced in the country, and they separate plastics on site before selling on, it was featured on BBC1's science magazine show 'Bang Goes the Theory' about 10 years ago, sadly that's not on iplayer now, but there's an article about it HERE.

So, that's probably one reason, but another is explained at 2.50 of this short video, basically West Sussex CC thought it was important to get long term markets for what they sell, at reasonable rates, unlike some council that cherry pick for high prices that are only short-term.

 

[Cid]

I don't think much is too contaminated when it arrives at Ford MRF, I've seen West Sussex CC reports that say around 80k tonnes are collected at the kerbside, and total sold on from the MRF is listed as 76596.46 tonnes.

I know the Ford MRF is one of the most advanced in the country, and they separate plastics on site before selling on, it was featured on BBC1's science magazine show 'Bang Goes the Theory' about 10 years ago, sadly that's not on iplayer now, but there's an article about it HERE.

So, that's probably one reason, but another is explained at 2.50 of this short video, basically West Sussex CC thought it was important to get long term markets for what they sell, at reasonable rates, unlike some council that cherry pick for high prices that are only short-term.

I mean don't get me wrong, if they're doing that well, then it's great. But it's a somewhat damning indictment of the rest of the country, given the general figure floating about for exported plastic waste seems to be ~60%.