What Happens To My Bottle?

Plastic bottles

If you are drinking from a plastic bottle, it will be made from one of two easily recyclable plastics – PET or HDPE (Polyethylene Terephthalate and High-Density Polyethylene if you want to impress someone with the technical names!).

Once you put your bottle into the Recycle Zone bin, a number of complicated processes start:

 

 

Stage 1: Squashing

 Your plastic bottle is squashed into a dry bale and sent to a reprocessor, for example the Closed Loop Recycling Plant at Dagenham

Stage 2: Dry Cleaning

Your bottle is spun to shake off dirt, and a magnet removes any metal

Stage 3: Sorting

Your bottle is then sorted by its type or colour. This can be by optical sorting, where a beam of light detects if the bottle is HDPE or PET or other. It can also be manually sorted

Stage 4: Grinding

Your bottle is then ground into flakes and these flakes are then sorted to remove coloured flakes and other contaminants

Stage 5: Decontamination

 The PET flakes are decontaminated by removing the surface layer using a solution of caustic soda. The HDPE flakes are melted, sieved, and turned into pellets. The flakes or pellets can then be made back into a new bottle for you to drink from and recycle again!

Did you know that your plastic bottle may not just become a bottle again? It could also become a plastic bag, garden furniture, seed trays, fleece, and fibre filling for sleeping bags and duvets, depending on how the bottle is recycled. Whatever the end product, all Recycle Zone plastic bottles are reprocessed through an Environment Agency accredited recycler

 

Glass Bottles

On the other hand, if you put a glass bottle into a Recycle Zone bin,  it will be go to the nearest glass reprocessing factory, and embark on its own recycling adventure.

Stage 1: Decontamination

 Your glass bottle, with all the others collected, will be monitored for purity, and contaminants removed

Stage 2: Crushing

Your glass bottle is then crushed and added to the raw material mix in the melting furnace

Stage 3: Moulding

It is then moulded or mechanically blown into a new bottle or jar, and sent out to a huge supermarket, a pub or a corner shop somewhere

Your glass bottle may also be moulded into some other more unexpected products including processed sand (the finely ground stuff used in golf course bunkers) or road surfacing.