Material Recovery Facilities - video transcript
This transcript is for the Materials Recovery Facilities video on the preparing and separating waste for recycling page.
[Title card: Welcome to N+P Crayford Material Recovery Facility]
Welcome to N+P’s Crayford Material Recovery Facility, located in the London Borough of Bexley.
For over 20 years, this site has played a key role in regional recycling efforts, receiving mixed recyclable materials from local councils for efficient separation and processing.
We handle a wide range of household recyclables, including paper and cardboard, glass, plastics bottles, tubs and trays, metal cans and tins.
Our facility combines manual expertise with advanced sorting technology to ensure these materials are recovered and prepared for recycling, helping reduce carbon usage and support a circular economy.
Health and safety is a top priority across all N+P sites, including Crayford MRF. Upon arrival, drivers receive a site-specific health and safety briefing to ensure they understand operational protocols and safety expectations.
Once cleared, they are safely directed to one of four designated tipping sheds. Here, materials are unloaded and visually inspected to confirm suitability for processing before entering the mechanical sortation system.
The pre-sort cabin is the first manual checkpoint in the sorting process. Here, trained staff remove any items that shouldn’t be in the recycling stream. It’s also where oversized pieces of cardboard are pulled out early, ensuring smoother processing further down the line.
The trommel is our first mechanical sortation separating system and it sorts material primarily by size. Inside the rotating drum are a series of holes of various sizes. As the drum turns, smaller items such as cans and plastics and glass fall through these openings and are directed along different conveyor belts. The larger items like paper and card will remain to the end and move to the paper cabins for further sortation.
Material from the end of the trommel is ready for further sortation and we remove everything other than paper. To support our pickers, we rely on mechanical sortation powered by advanced sensor technology. A series of near infrared sensors illuminate the materials on the conveyor belts. Based on the way light reflects off each item, the sensors are programmed to detect plastics and pinpoint their exact location. As the items reach the end of the belt, a computer-controlled system activates a precise jet of air, ejecting the identified plastic from the line with remarkable accuracy.
After passing through the trommel, the cans and plastics move on to the ballistic separator - a fast-moving system that uses disk screens to sort materials by shape and structure. Flat, 2D items like paper are separated away from the bulkier 3D objects such as bottles and cans, ensuring a cleaner stream of recyclables. Next, a powerful magnet sweeps over the line, effectively pulling out steel cans and sending them off for further processing.
Glass is separated using a destoner, which combines vibration and airflow to sort by density. As materials move across the vibrating deck, lighter items are lifted by air while the heavier fragments, like glass, settle and are directed onto a dedicated collection belt.
Real time monitoring allows us to ensure a safe working environment. From this control centre we can easily adjust speeds or reroute material streams to ensure the highest efficiency and quality of recyclables.
Next in line is the eddy current separator - a brilliant piece of engineering designed to remove non-ferrous metals like aluminium. It works by spinning a high-speed rotating magnet that generates eddy currents in the aluminium cans as they pass by. These currents create their own magnetic field which, thanks to matching polarity, repels the cans away from the rotor. Aluminium cans literally leap off the conveyor and onto a separate belt, cleanly separated from the rest of the material stream. It’s physics in motion and it’s incredibly effective.
Next, we bring in another layer of near infrared technology to fine-tune the plastic separation. Overhead lights beam down across the moving stream of materials, and the sensors, programmed to recognize subtle differences in light reflection, quickly identify specific types of plastic. This allows the system to target individual items with precision, such as clear HDPE like milk bottles and clear PET like water bottles. Each identified item is then swiftly ejected from the line using a burst of air, ensuring a clean and accurate sort.
Once separated, the items are stored separately and then moved on for bailing. We hold and then transport these various materials to re-processors to recycle them back into new products. This includes the paper, card, all the plastics, glass, steel and aluminium.
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