Where have all the tin cans gone?

Mike McKimm
BBC NI environment correspondent

With the threat of huge fines imposed by Europe, more households in Northern Ireland are having to get to grips with the recycling phenomenon.

For years, many diligent would-be recyclers have been busy sorting and delivering their newspapers, magazines and junk mail to the local council recycling centre.

Northern Ireland is getting to grips with recycling waste

Then, the blue bins at their door arrived to help them in their task.

Across Northern Ireland, tens of thousands of tons of paper is now collected on an annual basis. Its future was often vague, but not any more.

Every day, lorries criss cross the Irish Sea taking vast bales of waste paper to paper mills and returning with fresh newsprint.

The main focus is Shotton in north Wales.

The UPM plant takes 25% of the UK's waste paper and much of it now comes from councils and organisations around Northern Ireland.

Within hours, the paper has been pulped, had the ink removed (without chemicals) and has been turned back into huge rolls of paper.

Each roll weighs 20 tons before it is split into more manageable sizes for the newspaper industry.

Shotton has two production lines and turns out, on average, an astonishing four square kilometres a minute. The plant could paper Northern Ireland in 60 hours!

Aluminium

Then there are the millions of aluminium cans we use every year.

Northern Ireland has a fair share of the 5bn used each year in the UK.

About 60% of these are sent for recycling. It is a figure that is ahead of the rest of the UK, where less than 50% of the aluminium cans get a second chance. The cans are collected and baled before being sent off to Warrington in the north of England.

When they arrive at the only dedicated, aluminium can recycling plant in Europe, they are shredded, blasted by searingly hot air to remove the paint and then melted down.

60% of aluminium cans are sent for recycling

The end product is a pure aluminium ingot weighing 27 tons. Each one is rolled flat in Germany and turned back into 1.5m new aluminium cans.

It is a simple process, but very rewarding. Despite the transport costs, recycling the cans saves a vast amount of energy and resources, which is why a one ton bale of aluminium cans fetches more than £800.

It is a similar story for the old recycling favourite - glass. The answer to this heavier waste stream is closer to home.

Glass collected for recycling across the island of Ireland travels to Derrylin in County Fermanagh.

Every day, the Quinn Glass plant turns out more than 700 tons of new bottles. That is about 2.5m bottles each day.

The glass is simply melted down and molten "gobs" of glass are fired into moulds where the new bottle gets its shape.

Glass is a major recycling success story in Northern Ireland. but only because there is enough material to make it worthwhile.

The recycling industry is growing fast

The glass is not just used for bottles. It can be ground down and used to build roads or for other construction purposes.

Cardboard, steel cans and plastic bottles are also starting to be collected in serious amounts.

Most of the separated waste leaves Northern Ireland and goes to Britain or further afield for recycling.

The plastic bottles end up in China where they are turned into man-made fibres.

Recycling is an industry that is still in its embryonic stages in Northern Ireland but it is growing fast.

The core driving force is not the need to save the environment or a moral urge to do something useful with the waste.

It is the big stick of vast European fines if targets are not met. But it is a stick that is working.