Find out more about plastics
Great work Canterbury-Bankstown, you recycled over 8 million plastic bottles and other containers last year. That’s a lot of plastic bottles that will be made into new plastic containers and not sent to landfill.
What happens to them next?
After your yellow recycling bin is collected the truck is emptied at the VISY Smithfield recycling facility for further sorting and processing. Optical sorters use artificial intelligence, cameras and robotics to sort different types of plastics before they are washed and cut down into plastic flakes.
These flakes are then melted down into nurdles, which are the pre-production form of plastic about the size of a pea.
Then they are either made into new clear plastic bottles onsite or the nurdles are shipped overseas for further processing, giving new life to your old plastic bottles.
By recycling correctly at home, you contribute to keeping valuable resources out of landfill and contribute to a circular economy.
A soft plastic is a plastic that can be easily scrunched into a ball, like bread bags, chocolate wrappers or plastic bags. Soft plastics can’t go in your yellow lid bin. Put them in your red lid bin.
Soft plastics cannot go in the yellow bin. Soft plastic recycling trials have begun at some major grocery stores. Click here to see if there is soft plastics trial near you.
When plastic bags and other soft plastics are found in the recycling bin they can cause major problems. Plastic bags can become tangled in sorting machinery, which can cause breakdowns and even fires. This results in other materials going to landfill. If too many plastics are put in the yellow bin, the whole lot can go to landfill.