Visit to a recycling plant in South London

So I decided to take a stroll and in fact I could have gone anyvhere unchecked. I walked unsupervised a bit around than climbed some stairs to get some panoramic pictures and only then some suits (aka local beurocrat) saw me and they weren't pleased. I did not want to be a pain so I went back to reception and waited.Anyway eventually the organisers of what turned out to be a tour (a quick one at that) of the facilities showed up, waited to the last moment to see if and how many people of the dozen or so that could be taken as a batch at any one time around the plant, kitted us out with the Health & Safety gear and some fancy audio props and we started.

The good thing is that maybe to assuage me after I explained what happened to the tour organisers, I was allowed later to take photos.

Because we were late, and the plant was about to close, it was a rather rubber-neck type of affair but instructive non the less.

The picture do not convey the sometimes overwhelming odour (respiratory apparatus is apparently optional for the workers) and the dust and noise.

Definitively not a dream place, no wander that most of the people residing in the compound and apparently employees of the company, seemed to work in offices all around the main factory, well away for the heat, dust, smell and noise of the plant.

The plant, from what I could understand from what I saw and the explainations (not all together clear) we were given, basically get the raw garbage in, mixes them up, a little of it, after some sorting, goes to be dryed, unaided at room temperature, naturally ferment, and it is eventually used as part of the fuel needed for a near-by Heat and Power plant. The guide was saying that the H&P plant was there before the recycling factory was built but I could not understand if some of the power is fed back for the working of the recycling plant itself. What I remember was that there is some project to use the H&P plant to supply hot water (using at least in part the dried out garbage for fuel) to nearby estates but that nothing have been done yet.

The bulk of the garbage input is however sorted out differently and the various components (actually the material that they can make money out of, namely alumina, the paper apparently is a non-profit making recovery good) is retrieved and the the rest crumbled up and in a (mostly) refined state, is piled or bailed up waiting for the lot to be shipped out to other companies. -Out of sight out of mind. -

The plastic, according to the guide, is useless (as valued from the point of view of profit making produce) and all the glass at the end of the sorting out process, when it has becomes mixed and crashed by the separation processes, is shipped to the cement trade (so much for the glass bids in reception!).

Apparently it is cheaper than gravel/sand for aggregate.

There was no indication of what the mixed up, broken plastic fragments ended up to but it reasonable to imagine that some Chinese company or someone else with large shipping facilities, take it over somewhere in the world for disposal.

The company running the plant employ some administrative staff and few "local workers" that turned out all to be from agencies (they could not specify which), must work there for a month and if the plant bosses like them, they are then employed and help to sort out the garbage in some stages (the guide said they help take out the useless plastic after some previous separation process).

It looked hard work, the stench was unbearable, the atmosphere hot and saturated with humidity, the pace that of a factory line of former years. The work there is 7 hours shifts, 24/7, with half hour break and paid "just above" minimum wages. I could not help thinking of what I read about the tannery workers of past ages.

So much for the progressive face of the industry.

Besides I had the impression that these people were redundant to the actual processing, based on industrial and statistical principles at it was, I suspect instead they were just employed to get some fat state subsides, so all that was done on the cheapest possible budget.