This morning, with a bunch of other local residents, I had a very interesting tour of the re3 Recycling facility which is jointly used by Reading, Wokingham and Bracknell councils. It's well worth going on a tour if you get a chance. If you can't manage that there is a virtual tour on their website.
It was great to see all the automation to sort the waste, including an AI robot which recognises cans and sorts them by metal and optical sensors with air knives to blow different paper types off the belt (reminded me of the pea sorting machine many years ago when I worked for several summers in a pea factory).
There was a lot of effort put into ensuring the waste was high quality as this improved the price obtained. Some 23/24 statistics for you:
8,211 tonnes of Glass was collected from bottle banks.
18,126 tonnes of food waste
26,720 tonnes of green waste
4,195 tonnes of street sweepings
71,130 tonnes sent to Energy from waste
The total waste was 172,569 tonnes
and 582,908 visitors to recycling centres across the two sites.
We were told that RE3 could now recycle spray bottles and also have been trialling soft plastic in some areas. They now run the RE3GROW scheme which sells compost and also provides it free to community projects and schools.
