Recycling facility gets vexed with flex

Metres upon metres of electrical cables, video tape and even nylon tights are cleaned daily from West Sussex’s state-of-the-art Materials Recycling Facility (MRF).

Ford MRF – one of the UK’s most advanced Materials Recycling Facility - is being put to the test by residents who put the wrong materials in their kerbside recycling bins.

Technologies used at Ford MRF are, for example, designed to separate aluminium cans from steel cans, newspaper from junk mail and milk bottles from squash bottles.  What the plant cannot do is turn rubbish into quality materials suitable for recycling. 

Viridor’s Site engineer Rene Hoffman explains “Each day I pull out cables and textiles, which get caught up and wrapped around equipment.” 

“Items like this can potentially cause downtime and delays in operations that all impact the MRFs ability to efficiently separate the different materials that we should be sorting for recycling.”

Derek Whittington, Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning at WSCC said “Both West Sussex County Council and our contractors Viridor would like to appeal to all residents to help us by only putting out for collection those materials their local council asks for.”

Since opening last Summer the worst items the MRF has dealt with are dirty nappies.

Mr. Hoffman went on to say “Staff shouldn’t have to come into contact with items such as nappies because they shouldn’t be there in the first place.  Not to mention the cross contamination they cause with other materials”.

So the message is simple, only put out for recycling those items that your council has listed on their recycling literature or click here to read kerbside collection information.