For this week’s posts I wanted to give a bit more information on the life cycle of our mixed recycling bins on campus and what happens with them!
First of all it’s probably quiet important to understand what goes into the mixed #recycling (If I didn’t tell you this, this particular post wouldn’t be very useful would it!). The majority of waste produced on campus actually goes into the mixed recycling bins, we have exactly the same system for both @UKCStudent and @UniKentStaff with the following items going into green sacks and then the mixed recycling bins of; paper, card, tins, cans, all types of plastics (bottles, yogurt pots, food trays etc.), foil, aerosol sprays, sweet wrappers, crisp packets and tetrapak to name a few.
Therefore most of the items that you would buy in Essentials are actually recyclable! We have over 70 public litter bins on campus that have a recycling section, map of locations is available here in addition to over 150 euro bins which are all contained in waste compounds on campus, map of locations is available here. Each of the bins have stickers on them detailing what waste can go into each and the compounds in the accommodation areas have signage on the walls also! There’s no way that you can forget now!!
Once these Eurobins have been filled with the green mixed recycling bags (Hospitality remove from Colleges, Estates remove from general buildings and students remove from their accommodation) our waste contractor Viridor collects all of this bins on a scheduled basis (each area has a mixed recycling collection at least once a week) and is transported to the Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) in Crayford which processes over 2 million tonnes of recycled materials every year, isn’t that incredible! Sophisticated technology is used to separate materials into specific waste streams (and there’s also some hand sorting too) then each waste stream is recycled into something new.
Did you know that metal used in aeroplanes comes from recycled aluminium cans?!
Watch this short video showing you the recycling process that is undertaken by @ViridorUK and this short video created by yours truly!
For more information on what can be recycled on campus please follow our A-Z, look at your recycling wheel (please send me an email if you haven’t got one), sent us a tweet or contact us from our webpage.
We have a recycling target of 65% and we really need all of your help to achieve this goal so please….
………….Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeep recycling! 🙂