Blue bin waste

• pre inspection by quality control
• material is pushed onto a conveyor belt with loading shovel
• at the beginning of the incline on the conveyor there is an initial pre-pick where bulky non-target material is removed
• the material then flows onto an OCC star screen (which works to separate cardboard from paper) where cardboard of a certain dimension (300mm plus) is removed from the mixed paper, this cardboard falls into a bay ready for bailing
• the smaller dimensioned mixed paper falls through the OCC star screen onto another conveyor feeding into our picking cabin
• inside the picking cabin there is a manual sort to remove any smaller items of non-target material and waste
• once this is removed the remaining mixed paper falls onto another conveyor feeding into our bailing shed, where the material is baled for onward shipment to the Smurfit Westrock UK Paper Mills

At the paper mill, the bales are mixed with water in a pulper, which acts like a giant food blender. This process separates the fibres, allowing contaminants like staples, plastic, and ink to be removed.

Paper and cardboard fibres can be recycled and reused in the production loop 25 times without loss of integrity. Maintaining these recycled fibres in the production loop contributes to the circularity of the cardboard packaging industry. For any fibres that become to weak to be recycled, the water is squeezed out, and the solid product is used for composting. This means virtually all the paper and cardboard that arrives at our paper mills is recycled in one way or another.

The usable paper mixture is then sprayed onto large sheets of fabric and put through a press, which squeezes out more water to achieve the right thickness for making cardboard boxes.

After pressing, the sheets need to be dried further. This is done in enormous ovens, known as dryers, where the temperature reaches up to a sweltering 105 degrees Celsius. The heat dries the wet sheets into the final product, and starch is added at this stage to strengthen the paper.

Once dried, the paper is wound into massive reels, each weighing around 35 tonnes—the equivalent of six adult elephants! These reels are then cut down into smaller ready to be distributed to our packaging plants where they are used to produce corrugated cardboard and other paper-based products.

At the packaging plant, paper reels are fed into a corrugator, a machine that creates corrugated cardboard by bonding layers of paper together. Typically, this involves adhering an undulating fluted layer between two flat outer sheets, forming a strong and insulating material. Depending on the desired strength, the corrugator can produce single, double, or triple-walled corrugated boards by combining three, five, or seven layers of paper.
Once the corrugated board is formed, it is cut and folded according to a pre-designed template that includes specific dimensions, die-cut areas, and fold lines. Any necessary branding or product information is printed onto the sheets. Finally, the flat-packed sheets are transported to a factory, where they are assembled into boxes or other packaging products.