Discovering what happens to the paper and cardboard you put in your purple-lidded bin
Residents in Boston, North Kesteven and East and West Lindsey will be well aware of the purple-lidded paper and card recycling bin. And these bins are also set to be rolled out to households in Lincoln, South Kesteven and South Holland over the next couple of years. But why have we introduced this extra bin, just for paper and cardboard?
Unlike the rest of your home recycling – plastic tubs and trays, tins and cans, and glass jars and bottles – the paper and cardboard from purple-lidded bins goes to Palm Paper’s specialist paper mill in Kings Lynn, just over the border in Norfolk.
Here, it’s pulped, and then washed to remove any ink. The enormous plant can pulp up to 2,400 tonnes of recovered paper and cardboard every day. The paper pulp is then pressed, dried and rolled out into a long sheet of paper, which is then wound around a cardboard tube.
The huge rolls of paper are cut to size, labelled, and stored in the warehouse. But they’re not there for long; in less than two days, they’re already on their way to newsrooms across the country to be made into newspapers and magazines.
Which means magazines like the one you’re reading now could very well be made from recycled paper and cardboard.
On average, less than a week after your purple-lidded bin has been collected, you could be picking up your recycled paper and card again as a newspaper in your local corner shop.
So why can’t paper and cardboard from mixed recycling bins go through this process? If paper and cardboard is mixed with other recycling, it can easily become contaminated by small bits of food, by water or other liquids – all of which can’t be washed out. This ruins the fibres in the material.
By keeping paper and cardboard separate, we can keep it clean and dry so that it can be recycled at Palm Paper in Kings Lynn and used up to seven more times, as apposed to just once more from a mixed plant.
If you want to know what happens to your other recycling, see our last edition of County News (Summer/Autumn 2022), or visit the news section of our website at www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/news
If you’re ever in doubt about whether or not you can recycle something in your bins at home, leave it out, and then check it out on your district council’s website.