Recycling - what happens to it?

Last year, residents have helped us collect more recycling than ever before, including:

• 2240 tonnes of glass bottles and jars
• 4730 tonnes of mixed paper/card
• 410 tonnes of newspapers and magazines
• 210 tonnes of cans
• 150 tonnes of old clothes and shoes
• 50 tonnes of plastic drink bottles

But what happens to all this paper, glass and other materials you recycle?

• Glass
  Your glass is taken to Industrial Reclamations in Kent to be sorted and cleaned, ready to be recycled back into new bottles or jars or sometimes into aggregates for the construction industry.
  
• Newspapers and magazines (from recycling banks )
  Newspapers and magazines collected via the large blue Aylesford paper banks at our recycling bank sites are taken directly to Aylesford Newsprint Ltd's paper mill in Aylesford Kent. Here it is turned back into newsprint ready for the press to use again.
  
• Cardboard and mixed paper
  The cardboard and mixed paper is bailed together and then collected by a company called Severnside who are based in Croydon. They supply their parent company, St Regis Paper Company Ltd, with the raw materials required at one of their paper mills in Kent. The St Regis Paper Company is one if the largest paper manufacturers in the UK and form part of the DS Smith PLC. The cardboard and mixed paper is made into all types of packaging, paper and office products ranging from envelopes to corrugated cardboard and plasterboard liners.
  
• Food and drink cans
  We collect around 200 tonnes of cans a year. The cans collected are taken to AMG Resources sites across the country where they are separated into steel and aluminium cans. They are then turned into various items from more cans to parts for new cars.
  
• Textiles, old clothes, shoes
  The charity SCOPE looks after our clothes banks in Tandridge. They collect and distribute all the unwanted clothes to charity shops throughout the South East for resale, raising valuable income to help the charity's work with people with cerebral palsy. Any clothes that are not able to be resold are either used as industrial rags or as fibre for sound proofing requirements.
  
• Plastic bottles
  Our plastic drink bottle collection scheme is now available to half of all the homes in the district and has now collected around one and a half a million plastic drink bottles! These are taken to J A Young's in Leicester to be recycled into other plastic products.