Materials Recovery Facility (MRF)

Step 1

Supply system

The waste unloaded by the collection trucks is fed into the line through a metering hopper that ensures a steady flow of waste to the rest of the line.

Step 2

Pre-sorting by size

The waste is separated by size, using trommels or ballistic separators.

Small items, which are difficult to recycle and could be dangerous for the operators, are removed from the convey or belt. Very large items are processed separately.

Step 3

Separation by shapes

The waste unloaded by the collection trucks is fed into the line through a metering hopper that ensures a steady flow of waste to the rest of the line.

Step 4

Sorting by materials

Iron and steel packages are separated out by magnetised systems called overbands; aluminium items are captured by eddy current separators. 
Optical sorting machines scan the products to identify and separate out the different types of plastic, paper and cardboard.

Step 5

Quality control

Each material is then scanned to remove the last sorting errors. This step is generally carried out by primarily manual inspection by quality controllers. In recent years, it has become possible to install AI‑powered sorting robots to carry out part of this inspection.

Step 6

Packaging

This material is then compressed and packaged into “bales”.

Step 7

Bales

These bales are then sent to a processing facility that will convert these wastes into resources.
Rejects from the selective processing step can then be taken to a plant that converts them into solid recovered fuel’ (SRF) or Refuse‑derived fuel (RDF) and subsequently used to generate energy.