If you’re reading this, hopefully you currently recycle as much as you can. However, have you ever thought about where it actually goes? The answer’s here: a Materials Recycling Facility, or MRF (pronounced ‘murf’). We were invited to take a look inside Biffa’s £15M state-of-the-art facility in Ford, which is run by them on behalf of West Sussex County Council.
History
The £15 million facility was opened by Viridor in July 2009 under the newly-established West Sussex Recycling and waste handling contract. However, this was no ordinary MRF. It is almost fully automated, using only half the amount of workers as another facility of this size. The facility was designed to recycle a large range of objects, from tetra-paks to aluminium cans and foil. The big game-changer though was the decision to include glass; a material which many MRFs don’t. In 2021, it was acquired by Biffa, along with three other MRFs (Plymouth, Milton Keynes and Ipswich), 3 composting facilities and an Anaerobic Digestion Plant in Walpole. 3 years onward, it is still running today, processing 100,000 tons of waste per year, with a 95% recycling rate.
Upon Arrival
We arrived at the location in Ford, Arundel, where we were greeted by the Biffa Waste Education officer and our fellow visitors from Southwater Parish Council. We were walked in through main reception past a variety of artworks, before being shown into the education room. Inside the education room, we were talked to about various recycling tips and tricks, which you can read more about in our article here. After a short safety briefing, we entered the MRF.
Inside the MRF
After kerbside collection, the recycling will either be taken to a transfer station (where it will later be collected by a larger truck) or straight to Ford. The trucks are weighed, and the recycling is then dumped into a hopper. Oversized pieces of paper and card are manually sorted out, before the rest of the recycling enters the trommel. Inside the trommel (a large rotating drum), small pieces of smashed-up glass fall though the jam-jar sized holes, and then get crushed into sand. This can be then used in road-building across the UK.
The remaining recycling is then put through the ballistic separator, a slanted belt which shakes vigorously, shuffling the lighter materials (in this case paper) to the top, where they are sorted and baled. The heavier materials, such as plastics and metals, sink to the bottom pass on to the eddy current separator. In here, the spinning magnets create a negative electric current that levitates aluminium cans and foil into a different hopper, whilst the plastics fall down into the optical sorters.
Ford’s state-of-the-art TiTECH optical sorters allow West Sussex to recycle a wider range of plastics, than many other counties in the UK. These sorters use air jets to blow the different types of plastics into different hoppers. The plastics are then baled and sent for reprocessing, into the flakes and pellets that manufacturers use to make everyday objects such as plastic bottles and tupperwares.
The Remaining pieces of glass which were not initially crushed into sand are taken to a reprocessor and melted to make glass bottles and jars.