Recyling Trip

Fownhope CRAG at Envirosource recycling centre near Worcester.

On Monday 13^th September, Fownhope Carbon Reducing Active Group visited the destination for all the kerbside recycling collections for Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Mike Stass, the manager for the brand new state of the art facility proudly showed the group the sophisticated technology used to sort the refuse into different categories on the vast undercover production line. The flow passes through, not only magnet banks for extracting ferrous metals, but optical sorters that can be set to blow an amazing variety of objects off the conveyor belts using air jets. Staff mostly supervise this process, but the line passes through a couple of hand picking cabins to back up the machinery. The various categories such as glass, plastic and paper are then baled up into dense squares that can be loaded onto Lorries for shipping out to a number of customers.

Ten per cent of the factory’s intake cannot be recycled and unfortunately has to go to landfill. Mr Stass explained the strict protocol that modern landfill must adhere to in an effort to mitigate some of the harm of this action of last resort.

The recycling centre, which is a private finance initiative, earns its money not only from gate receipts, but from selling these bales on to manufacturing companies as raw materials.

Herefordshire’s own share of intake into the factory is 60 tonnes a day, which Envirosource sorts in just 2 hours. Mr Stass explained how much easier it made life at the centre when households recycled according to the guidelines and how unpleasant it could be for the staff when inappropriate things were placed in the bins. The staff recall with particular horror the day a litter of dead pigs arrived in a consignment from Hereford.

The CRAG group left very much reassured that while recycling is the least desirable part of the environmental mantra; “reduce, reuse, recycle,” it is done with professional competence and efficiency in Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

10 year old Anna Williams from Fownhope finds out how her rubbish is recycled.