 The Ford Materials Recycling Facility, MIRF as it is also known, is one of the most technologically advanced MIRFs in the country. It is operated by Viridot on behalf of West Sussex County Council. The automated MIRFs sort and separate the recyclables you put in your recycling bin at home into individual, high-quality, valuable materials which are bailed ready for manufacturing into new goods and products. The local district and borough will have picked up the recycling bin. Each truck contains on average of six tons of recycling. The MIRF possesses on average 76,000 tons a year. Recycling is tipped on the floor. Approximately one tonne of recycling gets loaded into the shovel and then is placed into the hopper. At this point large cardboard is removed and bailed for recycling and any visible rubbish is removed for disposal. As the trouble turns, glass bottles and glass jars smash and the pieces fall through the first set of holes. The smallest pieces are used for aggregate and the larger pieces are sent for remelts into new glass bottles and jars. Plastic bottles and containers, cans, small bits of paper in card, fall through the second set of larger holes onto a new conveyor belt and use papers and magazines travel to the back of the trailer onto another conveyor belt. The plastic bottles and containers, cans and paper and card conveyor belt heads the ballistic separators. The ballistic separators shuffle and shake the recycling as the ballistic separators is on its angle everything heavy and round rolls to the bottom like plastic bottles and cans and anything flat and light bounces its way to the top like paper and card. Magnetic belts attract steel cans, aerosols and jam jar lids. The rest of the recycling then passes through an eddy current separator. This contains spinning magnets that separate aluminium from the rest of the recycling by creating a negative current which repels the aluminium to make it jump onto a different conveyor belt. The plastic bottles and containers travel through the optical sorter. A light shines on the plastic bottles and containers and reflects back to the optical sorters. A sensor detects the wavelengths in the reflected light identifying the type of plastic bottle or container. The sensor triggers a jet of air to hit the plastic item and remove it from the conveyor. With the glass plastic bottles and containers steel and an aluminium removed the mixed paper and card, newspapers and magazines go through a final quality check to ensure the high quality standards are always delivered to the manufacturers. The different recyclable materials are sorted in their own separate bunkers. The final stage in the journey of the mirth is to the two balers. A baler's gush is the individual of recyclable types into cubes. Ready to be transported to re-processors and manufacturers to be recycled into new goods. Thank you for following me and the journey of recycling in West Sussex. You can find out more by following us at West Sussex Recycles.