What`s Involved in the Bottle and Can Recycling Process?

After sending your bottles and cans to your favourite Adelaide recycling depot, do you think of what happens to it? It's only natural to be curious about how your old bottles and cans are recycled into helpful new materials.

If you'd like to know more about the bottle and can recycling process, keep on reading. Here are some of the steps involved in the bottle and recycling process.

The Bottles and Cans Are Received and Sorted

It goes without saying that the first step in bottle and can recycling is getting the bottles and cans. All the bottles and cans are sorted and separated. The reason for the sorting process is that some people tend to turn in their bottles and cans with non-recyclable items. So any batch of bottles and cans is combed for impurities, so the whole process goes through smoothly.

Once the bottles and cans are inspected for impurities, the grouping step comes in. Bottles are grouped according to their types because different types of bottles require different recycling processes. So, for example, we can say plastic milk bottles will be grouped differently, while plastic shampoo bottles can be grouped separately.

The Bottles and Cans Are Cleaned and Processed

You'd be surprised at how dirty some cans and bottles can get! They are cleaned of all drink, food or chemical residue that may stall the recycling process. Once they are proven to be clean from any and all impurities, the bottles and cans are ground and processed into flakes. Then those fakes are melted to form small pellets.

These pellets that come from the recycled bottles and cans are sold to Adelaide companies that recycle.

You'll Get Your New Products

It's with these pellets that many new materials and equipment are formed. Materials like clothes, toys, more bottles and cans are created with recycled bottles and cans pellets. That's not all that's made from those pellets however, even electronics can be made with recycled items.  Once they're made into new products, they're released to the public.

And then everyone gets to enjoy the reward of recycling! This recycling process is what goes on here at Thorntons recycling in Adelaide. We make sure we sort our bottles and cans well and ensure that nothing goes wrong during the recycling process.

If you have amassed a large number of bottles and cans, call us, and we can come pick it up. But that's not all, as we can also give you money for it!

Sounds good to you? Contact us so we can get you started!