- Last Updated: October 22nd, 2025
Key Takeaways
- For households, collected materials are taken to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). Materials are then cleaned, sorted and baled to be sold to reprocessors. Waste that can’t be recycled often goes to waste-to-energy plants, where it’s burned to generate electricity and heat.
- In recent years, the UK has increased domestic reprocessing capacity, but some materials, especially plastic, are still exported. Source: BPF
What Happens To Recycled Waste? A Quick Breakdown
In the UK, what happens to your recycled waste depends on where you live and what materials you’re recycling, but here’s a clear overview of the general process: Each material is treated differently:
- Paper & cardboard: pulped, cleaned, and made into new paper or packaging
- Glass: crushed into cullet and melted to make new bottles or insulation
- Plastics: shredded, washed, melted into pellets, then used in new products (e.g., bottles, textiles, garden furniture)
- Metals: melted down to create new cans, car parts, or construction materials.
Why Recycling Is Important
Recycling is an important way to reduce landfill waste and promote environmental sustainability. When recyclable waste is sent to landfill sites, it is compressed causing the waste to break down anaerobically. This anaerobic decomposition causes a release in methane, a greenhouse gas.
Methane is twenty five times more potent than carbon dioxide. Its impact on the environment is detrimental; damaging the ozone layer and contributing to erratic weather changes and climate change. It also contaminates air and water, resulting in a reduction of biodiversity and rising respiratory problems.
However, the decision to not recycle your waste is easily changed. For household waste, local governments and organisations are working to improve the variety of recycling bins for all recyclable waste with new local recycling programs. Households are responsible for recycling plastic waste, metal waste, food waste and cardboard waste by segregating materials into separate containers for collection and processing.
Businesses are often required to organise their own recycling systems, which can often be time consuming, costly, and messy.
Collect and Recycle is a cost-effective and efficient waste management company. We work directly with businesses, ensuring successful and sustainable recycling of many types of materials.
What Happens To Your Cardboard and Paper Waste We Collect?
Collect and Recycle are one of the leading Paper and Cardboard recycling companies in the UK. We offer collections for a huge variety of paper and cardboard waste, including:
- Cardboard Bales
- Paper Bales
- Mixed Paper and Cardboard
- Newspapers and Magazines
- Redundant Stock
- Shredded Paper
Once the baled cardboard and paper waste has been collected, it will then be sent to paper mills. In these mills, the paper and cardboard is de-inked, ensuring it is completely clean. Following this, the waste is broken down and pulped. This breaks down the fibres in the waste to make them easier to process into new products.
What Happens To Your Hazardous Waste That We Collect?
Collect and Recycle offers storage, collections, and disposal for all your hazardous waste. The hazardous waste we can dispose of includes (but is not limited to):
These items have the ability to damage human and environmental health, and thus have specific legislation on disposal attached to them. Collect and Recycle follows these guidelines meticulously to ensure that you, your customers, our staff, and the environment, remain safe.
It is a legal requirement to store your hazardous waste away from other waste containers, and to store it safely. Collect and recycle offer containers for you to use. These containers are secure, labelled, and waterproof, to ensure no leakage or contamination.
We will also keep track of all information regarding your hazardous waste, with a full audit from collection to our recovery facility. We will hold onto this for three years to demonstrate your compliant waste disposal log.
Our haulage network will collect your hazardous waste whenever you need, whether, regular basis or ad hoc.
Once collected, the hazardous waste is taken by ADR Drivers to an authorised treatment facility where they treat the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the waste.
Get in Touch with Collect and Recycle today for a quote or more information on how we can help you.
