Seven steps of sorting at a Visy Material Recovery Facility (MRF)
- Pre-sort – MRF staff manually remove contaminates from recycling, such as plastic bags, as it travels on the conveying belts.
- Star screen sorting – fans and a series of shafts fitted with rotating star shaped discs propel recycling to the appropriate sorting area. Cardboard and paper is then sorted manually and sent to the paper mill.
- Glass is further sorted by colour and then transferred to a glass sorting facility. Glass that slips through this area is crushed and sent to the glass sorting
- Rotating magnates remove any steel cans.
- Eddy Currents is an electromagnet field that replays aluminium cans off the conveyor belt.
- Optical sorting – inferred sensors and air jets sort soft plastics type 1(PEAT) and type 2 (HDPE) and separate these from the rest.
- Manual sorting – MRF staff manually sort the other plastic types (types 3 to 7).