Recycling insight

Do you ever wonder what happens to all the mixed recycled material that goes in your blue bin?

Recently, a group of residents had the opportunity to visit Sherbourne Recycling Centre, arranged by Cllr Dave Passingham. A joint partnership of eight West Midland local authorities, including Stratford District Council and Sherbourne Recycling Ltd, this amazing Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) is the most advanced MRF in the UK and uses AI technology to process the dry recycled material from your bin.

Sorting 47.5 tonnes of mixed recyclate with only five human sorters is pretty amazing, but so are the robot sorters – picking out the metals, blowing different plastics three different ways and having a 99% accuracy rate for selling the sorted materials onward, plus all the electric used is from renewable sources makes this plant very sustainable. All materials are recycled in the UK, nothing is sent overseas. It also means that SDC get money back from the high purity recyclate that is sold on.

To keep this high level, please rinse out your cans, bottles and plastic packaging and don’t include saucepans and baking trays, shoes or clothes. We did see that someone had included a used nappy!

The Association of Public Service Excellence have awarded Sherbourne Recycling the Best Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Initiative 2025. See https://sherbournerecycling.co.uk/ for further information.