REAL RECYCLING
The rise of recycling is part of a growing global awareness of the limits of resources, the growing population numbers, and that materials once used, can be used again and again.
Most materials can be recycled, some surprisingly effectively.
Aluminium drinks cans, for instance, can be melted down, restructured, re-used, and back on super market shelves within two months! Not only that, they can be recycled again and again and again. The electricity saved by recycling one can, is enough to power a television for three hours!
Recycling has grown, by its own serious necessity, into big business.
As the demands have grown technological improvements have made many methods become more cost effective and less time consuming. Machinery and plant has grown in size and sophistication as the industry has become more effective and wide-reaching.
The UK produces around 100 million tonnes of waste every year and the ensuing industry must have no limits to its recycling potential. Be it cans to cars, paper to tyres or fridges to ships, it can all be reduced to reusable components, or handle-able sized units.
Be it compacted or shredded, melted or granulated, or carefully dismantled, pretty much anything and everything can, and should be, recycled. Big business, big investment. Big plant, big machinery. Big potential, big future.
Where one of the reasons for recycling was born through dwindling supplies of raw materials, the waste recycling industry is growing as its raw material supply increases, bringing with it its own specific areas of technological research and development.
Re-cycling is a major player in modern waste reduction, it produces a new raw material, reducing consumption of natures’ raw materials and removes waste’s potential pollution which poor solutions such as landfill or incineration contribute to. It is a basically a simple, cost effective way to improve sustainability and help meet waste legislation.