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🔄 The recycling journey

Follow a drinks can from your bin to its next life.

  1. 🏠

    1. Your bin

    You rinse the can and put it in the recycling. Clean recycling is easier to sort and more of it can be used.

  2. 🚛

    2. Collection day

    The council or its contractor collects your recycling and takes it to a sorting centre.

  3. 🏭

    3. Sorting

    At a materials recovery facility, machines and people separate the materials. Magnets pull out steel, and other machines push out aluminium cans, paper and different plastics.

  4. 🧱

    4. Baling

    Each material is squashed into big blocks called bales and sent to companies that can reuse it.

  5. 🔥

    5. Remaking

    Cans are melted down and made into new metal. Paper is pulped into new paper and card. Some plastics become new bottles, trays or fibres.

  6. 🛒

    6. Back in the shop

    The material comes back as new products, and the journey can start again.

Why sorting at home matters. Food left in containers, plastic bags and the wrong items (like batteries) can spoil a load or even start fires. Checking what your council collects helps the whole journey work.

Play Bin Sorter →

More learn

What’s changing in UK waste

The big changes to bins, recycling, packaging and waste tracking, with the dates that matter, in plain English.

Fly-tipping in numbers

The latest official fly-tipping figures for England: how many incidents, what gets dumped, and what councils do about it.

For schools and families

Free games, a printable sorting worksheet and a certificate to help children learn about rubbish, recycling and staying safe.