What Happens to Bottle and Cans Once You Drop Them Off at a Recycling Depot in Adelaide

The recycling process starts from you but doesn’t, contrary to popular belief, end at the recycling depot.

Recycling depots are a sort of middle man In the recycling chain because they collect your bottles and cans and give them to the organisations that’ll use them.

But the question is, what happens to your bottles and cans after you drop them off at your recycling depot?

Your bottles and cans go through the following processes:

Sort

When people drop off their bottles and cans for recycling it is mixed with other items or contains unusable bottles and cans. The first thing that happens at the recycling depot is separating the good bottles and cans from the useless ones.

Once they’ve selected the bottles and cans that can be recycled, the rest are thrown away.

Cleaned

Most recycling depots tell people to wash their bottles and cans before they drop them off. However, only clean bottles and cans are recycled, and so the workers will have to make sure every bottle and can is sparkly clean and void of food remnants . 

Also, dirty cans or bottles can contaminate the whole batch of plastic pellets, so this is an important step.

This step may not happen; it depends on the type of Adelaide recycling depot. Some recycling depots reject dirty bottles and cans- they see it as more trouble than it’s worth. 

You can look at it like this; if you want to give out an old cloth, you’ll want to ensure it’s clean and in its best collection. It is the same thing with bottles and cans.

Caps are removed

The caps of bottles are removed at the recycling depot once they’ve been cleaned out. Recycling depots usually tell their customers to remove the caps off their bottles before bringing them down. 

The caps are often made out of different materials than the bottle, so they can’t be recycled together. The cap can also jam a machine in the recycling depot, so moving it is always essential.

Once the caps are removed, labels are also removed from the bottles . 

Crushed

Bottles and cans are crushed and ground into small pellets that are the end product of recycling. Well, not the end product because it hasn’t been made into a new item yet. 

When the bottles and cans are crushed, they are further washed and dried to make sure they’re sterile and free of contaminants.

This is why it can’t be overstressed that you submit clean bottles and cans; it would make recycling easier.

Sent off to companies

Once the bottles and cans have been crushed into tiny pellets, manufacturers come to pick them up from the recycling depot. The pellets are then used to make whatever the manufacturer wants. It could be clothes, toys, bottles, and cans, etc.

The whole magic happens in a recycling depot, and that’s why you should only pick the best. Thornton’s recycling is the best recycling depot you can use in Adelaide- when you recycle with us, we can come to your home or business and pick up your recycled items!

Sounds good to you? Contact us!