What is recycling?

Recycling takes things that have already been used, are old or unwanted and makes them into something new.

Some things can be recycled and made into the same item again, such as paper and glass and cans. Others will be made into something totally different - for example, plastic drink cups can be made into pencils, and plastic bottles into fleece jackets.

What happens to your recycling?

Once you have put your recyclables out for collection, or taken them to the recycling site, they will be picked up and taken for sorting into the different materials or bulked into large quantities ready for transporting to the reprocessors.

They are then turned into another material, eg crushed glass and chipped plastic. This is then used by manufacturers to make new materials such as paper, glass bottles and plastic bottles and cans ready to be filled with the products we like to buy. These new products can then be found on shop shelves for you to buy - see Buying recycled.