Where Does My Waste Go?
As more and more of us are recycling our general household waste, from separating your food waste, your glass, cardboard and even tins, you might be sceptical about which items from your skip are actually recycled. You will be glad to know that here at Staffordshire Skip Hire, we do all we can to ensure your waste heads to the right destination.
First Stop: Sorting
You may have thrown a complete variety of waste into your skip, from removing waste from a home renovation to digging up the jungle that should be a back garden. Everything is combined into one skip, meaning that its first stop after we collect it is the sorting facility.
This sorting facility will separate the waste in each skip to ensure that the correct waste can go to each recycling centre.
Household Waste
There are a number of waste items that end up in our skips that could be easily recycled in your home recycling bins. These will all get separated out at the sorting facility and despatched to the appropriate facility, where your home recycling will also go. The most common we see are glass and metals.
Glass – Glass is one of the most recycled materials here in the UK. Glass that arrives at the appropriate recycling facility will be ground and crushed, combined with raw materials, superheated and then formed into a new product.
Your recycled glass can be found in a range of widely products, and even some that we encounter in our everyday lives. Many drinks companies have begun to use recycled glass where they use glass bottles, a number of reusable glass bottles are also now made from recycled glass, alongside recycled glass countertops.
Metal – Alongside glass, the other most commonly recycled material is metal. Some types of metal, such as aluminium, is widely recycled in your household recycling. However, other metals aren’t usually discarded in our usual recycling, so find their way into our skips, where they will end up at the most appropriate recycling facility.
Aluminium is usually found in our homes in the form of drinks cans and food tins. While these can be popped in the usual recycling, we also welcome this form of metal. Once recycled aluminium is smelted into large blocks to then be reused, even ending up in the aerospace industry.
Equally as common is steel, including stainless steel. This commonly finds its way onto our front lawns to be collected by the scrap men. However, it also ends up in our skips to be appropriately sorted. Steel that is recycled can end up back in your life by way of a new bicycle frame, or even end up as train tracks.
Iron and copper are also found disposed of in our skips. This will be directed to the most appropriate facility as they are considered of higher scrap value.
Garden Waste
Clearing out your garden can leave you with an abundance of organic garden waste. Organic waste will compost regardless of the facility it ends up at, however, by ensuring that it ends up in the most appropriate facility, the composted materials can be re-used, and may even end up back in your garden when your purchase compost.
Where your compostable waste is mixed into other in-organic waste, it will be separated and checked to ensure that there is no contamination before being moved to a compost site.
For more information on the facilities where our waste ends up, please contact our team today. To book skip hire, please get in touch today, or head over to our skips to find the right size for your needs.