It’s interesting to know what happens to all our recycling that many of us do sometimes with long teeth. Relieving the pressure on our landfills and offering work opportunities to NGOs such as Oasis can only be a good thing.

Paper – old paper is mixed with water and turned into pulp which is cleaned, washed and rolled into sheets. Paper can be recycled seven times and the paper recovered in South Africa in 2012 was enough to fill 1380 olympic sized pools.

Glass – the glass is crushed and then sorted using beams of light to separate the different colours. The glass bits are melted in a furnace, raw materials added and then the hot liquid glass is poured into moulds to make new jars and bottles. Glass can be recycled forever. Recycling one glass bottle a day for a year means you save enough energy to power a computer for 120 hours.

Plastic – cartons and bottles are shredded into small flakes. These are washed and poured into flotation tanks and then melted to make new bottles or turned into various bags, CD cases and the filling for sleeping bags. Bread bag tags are sold by a charity which manages to buy 2 or 3 wheelchairs every month.

Metal cans – Steel cans go straight into furnaces to be melted, rolled into coils and eventually shaped into new cans. Steel cans are the most recycled food and drink containers. Nearly 90% of cans are recycled which means that less than 1% of the rubbish in landfills is made up of metal cans. Aluminium cans are shredded, cleaned using very hot air before going into the furnace and eventually hardened into ingots.

Please REDUCE, REUSE AND RECYCLE.

Young Mums please don’t use disposable nappies all the time. There are very viable alternatives which save space and reduce pollution in landfills and also work out substantially cheaper. www.mothernatureproducts

Photo: www.birmingham.gov.uk/commercial-recycling