That’s not rubbish, it’s got life in it yet

11:14am Thursday 7th August 2008

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For someone who thinks recycling is a bit rubbish the thought of going to a dump that deals with it didn't fill me with excitement.

I diligently put newspapers in my black box but thought they were probably mashed up into greying booklets and old cans made into horrible necklaces.

But as Hills Recycling Transfer Station foreman John Chapman says, I am one of many recycling ignorants.

However, we're a dwindling breed as more people are turning green across North Wiltshire. With the introduction of black boxes, recycling is up between one third and two fifths and rising.

But when you chuck your old wine bottles, beer cans and well-thumbed Gazette into the black box little do you know what happens to the stuff.

All of North Wiltshire's recycled rubbish is taken straight from the black bins and supermarket recycling centres to just around the corner in Calne.

Walking into Hills Recycling Transfer Station in Lower Compton is surreal. Among the mountains of paper, cans and cardboard, John Chapman explains how recycling is the new success story of the west - and you can tell he has done this before.

"We have tours here with schools and WIs and sometimes blokes come along and they're all adamant all recycling ends up in landfill anyway, so why bother," he said.

"I hope people seeing these pictures will convince them it doesn't."

Outside the huge warehouse, mounds of smashed glass in three different colours is piled high, while inside bays of cans, newspaper and cardboard lie waiting to be compacted and sent on to recycling plants across the country.

One batch of bales contained 32,000 cans that had earlier been sorted and separated into aluminium or steel.

"Each bale weighs half a ton," said Mr Chapman. "It could come back within weeks as anything. Our job is to process it, sort it and compact it."

The worst problem is cardboard because of the attached plastics and staples. All this has to be picked out by staff monitoring a huge conveyor belt.

The glass goes to Yorkshire where it is remoulded into new glassware while the paper goes to Kent, where it is turned into new paper in a process that it can undergo 15 times.

Foil food packaging goes to Middlefield School in Chippenham, a centre for adults with learning difficulties, where it is sorted and cleaned and shipped on to be turned into new food containers or even car parts.

It was news to me that you could even put foil in the black box, and I was suprised to learn aerosol cans, clothes and shoes can go in as well.

The shoes are sent to Devizes to be sorted and mended then given to charities. Outside the plant huge mounds of garden waste are lined up in rows, each at a different stage of the recycling process. Hills sells this compost back to the people who give this to them.

Wiltshire's waste officer Catherine Dixon said: "It's all about changing people's attitudes so they don't look at all this as rubbish but instead see it as a resource."

My education complete I left the site feeling ready to recycle, attitude changed.