Where does your recycling go?
Ever wondered where your recycling goes once Printwaste have collected it from school? Karen and Kate were recently shown round the Printwaste depot by Sales Manager, Geoff Quayle. Geoff explained that the recycling from about 60,000 Gloucestershire school children has passed through their depot.
Printwaste van drivers collect a variety of materials, such as paper, plastic bottles and card at a time to suit each school. The materials are then carefully sorted and baled in the two large depots at Stoke Orchard. Printwaste also run a secure site in Cheltenham that deals with confidential waste.
From Stoke Orchard, the baled materials are loaded onto lorries and transported to facilities within the UK for reprocessing. The speed with which materials are recycled is amazing, and paper can be back in your classroom within three weeks! The great thing about recycling is that it can transform things into completely new materials. Geoff showed Karen and Kate some plastic milk bottles which had arrived that morning from a school. He explained that these could then be melted down in Lincolnshire, spun into fibres and turned into fleece clothing. Perhaps you're wearing a bottle or two now!
02 April 2009