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Leeds Materials Recycling Facility

This H W Martin Waste Ltd facility is used by Leeds City Council and many other public and private sector clients to process, sort and segregate mixed dry recyclable waste materials from residences and industry from Leeds and the surrounding region; and to produce materials suitable for re-introduction into the manufacturing sector. The facility fulfils a growing need for high quality and reliable recyclable materials sorting, to meet the increasing volumes from council kerbside recycling collection services and the waste minimisation activities of businesses.

The company’s multi-million pound Leeds Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) was opened on 1st June 2007.

Part of the recycling process at our Leeds MRF.
Part of the recycling process at our Leeds MRF.

H W Martin’s Activity

The MRF has the capacity to process in excess of 80,000 tonnes of material each year. Deliveries of mixed recyclable materials are received continuously throughout the day and take a journey through several stages of state-of-the-art sorting technology and hands-on quality control.

Materials end the journey as bales or loose loads. Each material type is loaded onto lorries and sent to factories where they are made ready for manufacture. For example, paper is pulped in the UK and re-made into new rolls of paper. Steel, aluminium and other metals are melted down and re-formed into ingots or straight into casting.

Textiles are washed and dried in our industrial-scale equipment. Clean, dry textiles can be fully re-used or recycled. Unlike soiled and unsorted textiles, most of which would end up as waste.

The plastics sorting facility running alongside the main MRF process uses several specialised technologies to separate the various plastic polymer types, which are flaked and washed in order that it is of the highest quality when delivered to plastic product manufacturers. It is essential that polymers are not mixed, as they cannot be melted and reformed, and they must be clean. The H W Martin plastics recovery facility meets the stringent requirements of the plastics manufacturing industry. Read more about it here.

The materials the MRF sorts and makes ready for the re-processing industry include:

  • Newspaper
  • Magazines
  • Catalogues
  • Yellow Pages
  • Envelopes
  • Leaflets and junk mail
  • Cardboard
  • Steel and aluminium cans
  • Scrap metals
  • Foil
  • Plastic bottles
  • Glass bottles and glass jars
  • Textiles
  • Tetra Pak

Glass undertakes further processing at H W Martin Waste Ltd’s own dedicated glass sorting facility. Read more about that here.

The MRF has received several upgrades and process additions since opening. It is subject to a programme of continuous development and improvement to capitalise on advances in technology and to meet the evolving needs of the market.

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Outcomes

The MRF has provided Leeds, West Yorkshire and the wider area with effective sorting and segregation of recyclables and the production of high quality, industry-ready materials since it opened in 2007.

It continues to be the MRF of choice for councils up and down the country, and an important local recycling resource for commercial and industrial businesses.

This success is down to many things, including an excellent team of employees, dedicated managers, attention to detail, use of technology, quality product outputs, strict audit trails, and good reporting and feedback services to clients.

The company’s Leeds MRF has been used by WRAP (the government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme) as an “exemplar facility”. It continues to set a benchmark against which the MRF industry is compared.

If you would like to talk to us to arrange our handling of your recyclable waste at one of our MRFs, please call us on 01773 860 600 or email recycling@hwmartin.com.