{"id":205308,"date":"2025-12-28T16:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T16:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/205308\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T16:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T16:10:17","slug":"how-biffa-sorts-christmas-waste-and-the-recycling-errors-to-avoid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/205308\/","title":{"rendered":"How Biffa sorts Christmas waste and the recycling errors to avoid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inside a vast plant in Edmonton, north London, Coke cans, Amazon boxes and other ghosts of Christmas past speed along conveyor belts, blasted with air jets and zapped by three-tonne magnets to separate materials before being crushed into colourful bales.<\/p>\n

After Britain went to bed on Christmas Day, the waste giant Biffa\u2019s \u201cmaterials recovery facility\u201d geared up to deal with the debris of our festive food and gifts.<\/p>\n

More than 350 staff work at Edmonton, one of Britain\u2019s biggest recycling hubs, which runs 24 hours a day, 364 days a year, processing 280,000 tonnes of household waste annually.<\/p>\n

Now is its busiest period: the UK produces 30 per cent more waste than usual this week, including enough wrapping paper to wrap around the planet nine times, one billion Christmas cards and 114,000 tonnes of plastic packaging<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Aerial<\/p>\n

Biffa\u2019s plant in Edmonton, north London<\/p>\n

ROBERT MILLS PHOTOGRAPHY<\/p>\n

Edmonton\u2019s recycling work is an odd mix of highly technical \u2014 optical scanners, AI software and magnetic current filtering to split rubbish into its material components \u2014 and deeply manual. Workers in orange high-vis, goggles and gloves loom over conveyor belts, rapidly whipping out chunks of metal, jeans, soiled nappies and other \u201ccontaminants\u201d, as Michael Topham, Biffa\u2019s chief executive, puts it as we stand on a metal platform gazing down.<\/p>\n

Krispy Kreme packets, pizza boxes, milk bottles and cardboard stream past, and the 53-year-old chief executive muses that \u201cthis is a mesmerising story of our consumption\u201d.<\/p>\n

When the plant opened 15 years ago, newsprint ruled and cardboard came mostly in large TV boxes. Now digital media and online shopping boxes dominate.<\/p>\n

Plastic bottle use is growing. \u201cNegative news around the water industry seems to have led to a mistaken societal distrust of drinking water,\u201d Topham adds as Evians roll past.<\/p>\n

Biffa has a plant at Plymouth, where staff find marine distress flares in the loads; in Edmonton, treasures have included a 400-year-old Bible, a fencing sword, police riot shields and weapons. A Teesside centre found body parts; another received live shotgun shells, which \u201camazingly didn\u2019t set off\u201d.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s treasure in the muck, though. Biffa, which US private equity company Energy Capital Partners (ECP) took private for \u00a31.3 billion in 2023, is one of the country\u2019s biggest waste firms, alongside the French multinational Veolia. Revenues rose 9 per cent to \u00a31.89 billion last year, with underlying earnings of \u00a3271 million. <\/p>\n

Topham has been at the company for 15 years \u2014 as the firm went on its own \u201ccircular economy\u201d of ownership, from hedge fund to public listing to delisting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the FTSE 250, we performed, but struggled with the broader problem around funding flowing into UK public equities,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a matter of time before someone came along with an offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now ECP\u2019s investment focuses on technology: Biffa hasn\u2019t yet turned its fleet of 3,500 \u00a3250,000 diesel bin trucks electric, but automation of sorting has ramped up. We pass the now-abandoned \u201cfibre cabin\u201d area, where 30 people used to sort recycling; now, machines shake out plastics so paper and cardboard can be crushed into 80 bales, each weighing 1.2 tonnes, a day. Many are sent to Germany and France, as UK mills cannot keep up.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have this idealised image that everything is recycled perfectly nearby,\u201d Topham said. <\/p>\n

He fears the government\u2019s proposals to mandate recycling of flexible plastic \u2014 such as carrier bags and ready meal film \u2014 could damage exports. \u201cThere\u2019s no end user in the UK,\u201d he said. Some in the waste sector have been condemned for sending plastic abroad, where it has ended up in toxic piles in unregulated countries.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Why aren\u2019t people recycling any more?<\/a><\/p>\n

Topham wants the government to ban unprocessed plastic exports. \u201cKeeping plastic in the UK would create green jobs and resilience. The fear that it would push up the cost of living is unfounded \u2014 recycled plastic can be cheaper than virgin plastic. Our backers have a lot of capital available to invest in this, but there\u2019s a nervousness that any change of government would reverse policy. It\u2019s a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crows circle a huge rubbish mountain as bin trucks reverse in, each dumping another eight tonnes of recycling. A fat rat darts around as loading shovels scoop waste to the start of the sorting conveyor belt. The plant\u2019s two cats and hawk are obviously having a nap.<\/p>\n

\"Biffa<\/p>\n

Eighty bales of crushed paper and cardboard, each weighing 1.2 tonnes, can be produced every day<\/p>\n

ROBERT MILLS PHOTOGRAPHY<\/p>\n

Topham, though, says the pile\u2019s highest risk isn\u2019t vermin but disposable vapes. When mistakenly put in recycling and crushed, their lithium-ion batteries are liable to burst into flames.<\/p>\n

\u201cVapes have caused a massive increase in fires in recycling plants over the past two years,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve introduced ceiling water cannons to try to contain it \u2014 but vapes are dangerous and expensive, and ultimately taxpayers pay for the damage.\u201d He wants the government to bring in a deposit return scheme on vapes, but it\u2019s focused on an incoming scheme for plastic bottles.<\/p>\n

Unlike most British factories, there\u2019s still a corridor of workers\u2019 lockers and a full car park in Edmonton. Biffa employs 11,000, mostly on bin rounds, but in sorting too. \u201cRobotic picking isn\u2019t there yet \u2014 it\u2019s still slower and less accurate than people,\u201d Topham said. \u201cBut it will improve. UV-readable tags are being trialled on packaging, so plants can identify not just material but brand. That data will drive better packaging design.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Much of the rubbish can be filtered by scanners but workers are still needed to remove \u201ccontaminants\u201d<\/p>\n

ROBERT MILLS PHOTOGRAPHY<\/p>\n

Behind us, a beeping lorry is filled with crushed milk bottles. Within a fortnight, these will be washed, flaked to lentil-sized pellets that are delivered to Arla Aylesbury, the UK\u2019s largest dairy, then mixed with virgin plastic from shale gas, blown into bottles and put back on supermarket shelves, filled with milk again.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo weeks!\u201d beamed Topham. \u201cPeople don\u2019t celebrate it, because it\u2019s plastic. But it\u2019s an amazing, brilliant system. Recycling really can be wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n

How to recycle properly<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the issue that\u2019s led to thousands of arguments: is it OK to chuck dirty, yoghurt-smeared pots and hummus tubs in the recycling, or is this \u201cwishcycling\u201d that diverts whole bin-bags to landfill?<\/p>\n

\u201cJust do a cursory rinse,\u201d Topham says. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to absolutely wash it. If people are putting their recycling in the dishwasher or filling up a sink of hot water just to clean it, that is not the right thing to do. But rinsing out obvious food contamination is really helpful.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had something like a ketchup bottle, with bits of the sticky sauce still stuck inside, there\u2019s a chance that the [sorting machines\u2019] optical readers wouldn\u2019t see that, and it would go off to be burnt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eat your takeaways before the oil sinks in: food-soiled packaging ruins entire batches of recycling<\/a>, so tear off or fold away contaminated parts. \u201cCardboard pizza boxes are easily recyclable when not too greasy and not too contaminated,\u201d Topham adds. \u201cBut if the pizza\u2019s been left in the box all night and left an oily residue, then it won\u2019t be accepted for recycling at the mill.\u201d<\/p>\n

And use your brain when you see recycling labels. Topham reckons some of the used nappies going through Edmonton\u2019s machines are there because the outer packaging says that it\u2019s recyclable. \u201cThe plastic around it might be recyclable, but dirty nappies are sadly very much not.\u201d The same is true for woollen insulation packs inside home delivery kits such as Hello Fresh: the outer packaging is recyclable, but the inner wool can\u2019t go into a normal recycling bin.<\/p>\n

Kerbside recycling bins are only for plastic bottles, pots, tubs, trays, glass bottles and jars, paper and cardboard and metal cans and tins.<\/p>\n

But some other items can be recycled. Take clothes to textile recycling points at council tips if they\u2019re not worthy for the charity shop. Batteries (even AA or button types), vapes, small electrical items such as kettles, toasters, hairdryers and hazardous items such as full aerosol cans, batteries and lightbulbs should never go in home recycling bins, but can be recycled if you take them to council tips or battery drop-off points in supermarkets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inside a vast plant in Edmonton, north London, Coke cans, Amazon boxes and other ghosts of Christmas past…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-205308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}