Mayside Recycling is an independent contractor, licensed to process dry materials for recycling. We have been operating for 30 years.

Our Team sorts and separates different materials (paper, card, tins, cartons and plastics), which are then transported to specialist recycling facilities in the UK.

Mayside Recycling has been awarded the States of Guernsey kerbside recycling contract. Collection contractors pick up the clear and blue recycling bags from households on parish rounds and deliver these to Mayside’s depot. The Team at Mayside then process the bags.

As a contractor, Mayside Recycling is not responsible for the strategy that determines how kerbside recycling or collections are implemented or organised.

Of course!

We can provide office recycling bins and bags; and a collection service at a time that suits you.

Alternatively, you may prefer to deliver to our depot.

Please get in touch to discuss the different options available, so that we can find a solution that works for you. 

Clean, dry paper and cardboard.

This includes office paper, stationary, envelopes, shredded paper, craft paper, newspaper, magazines, cereal boxes, corrugated carboard, egg boxes and toilet roll tubes.  

Wet paper, wet cardboard and paper towel.

Most tetra-paks, juice cartons, tin cans, aluminium foil and plastics, EXCEPT black plastics and single use plastics (see below).

Plastics that can be recycled include most domestic bottles made of PET1, HDPE 2, (labelled as 2 / HDPE / PE), PP5 and PS6.

Black plastics, such as food packaging trays or black plant pots, cannot be recycled. This is because plastics recycling facilities use optical lasers to sort the plastics passing along on conveyor belts, and black plastics cannot be “seen” by the machinery.

Polythene cannot go in your blue bag.

Single use plastics cannot go in your blue bag: these include pet food sachets, cling film, plastic film covers from food packaging, bubblewrap, Styrofoam, polystyrene and crisp packets. Single use plastics are designed to be used once but then immediately disposed of. For example, if you buy a plastic punnet of raspberries, the plastic punnet can be recycled, but the plastic film on top cannot be.

Bottles that contained motor oil, chemicals or paint should not go in your blue bin bag. These present a hazard to our Employees, when manually sorting the contents of the bags.

In short, materials that should NOT go in the blue bag include:

• Single use plastics
• Polythene
• Black plastics
• Bottles that contained motor oil, chemicals or paint
• Glass
• Food waste
• Batteries and WEEE (electrical equipment)
• Gas bottles
• Clinical waste
• Nappies and dog poo bags (hopefully this is obvious)!

Yes – no problem.

Wash, squash, and put the top back on.

There are different political, economic, safety and technical reasons why some plastics cannot be, or are not, recycled. From a technical perspective, it is difficult to separate out black plastics during the recycling process because they do not reflect light so cannot be identified by optical scanners.

In addition to the technical difficulty, new black plastic is so cheap there would be little market within manufacturing industries for recycled black plastic. The cost of setting up the specific infrastructure needed to be able to specifically sort black plastics is a deterrent, as these costs would not be recovered from the sale of recycled materials.

Single use plastics, such as plastic film on food trays, cause problems during mechanical processing. However, some supermarkets now offer FREEPOST addresses so you can return film rather than putting it in your black bin bag.

Every day, kerbside recycling bags are delivered to Mayside Recycling’s depot. These are tipped inside the warehouse, and are fed into the “bag splitter”. The bag splitter rips open the bags, and all the contents fall onto a conveyor belt.

The conveyor belt moves past a team of Operatives who manually sort through the materials to separate the different types from each other.

Operatives pick off the ripped polythene bags, which can be baled and recycled or used as RDF. During “Blue Bag Week” the Operatives will manually pick off the milk cartons from the conveyor belt and drop them down a chute into a storage bay.

At the end of the conveyor belt are different magnet, which can pull off the ferrous and non-ferrous metals from the conveyor belt and drops these down a different chute into a metals storage bay.

The remaining plastics drop into a different storage bay.

In this way, the materials are separated out into different streams (tetra-pak, metals, tins and plastics), ready for baling.

The same process is followed to separate as much paper from cardboard as possible.

Yes, wherever.

After the bag splitter rips open the bag to release the contents, the bag falls onto the conveyor belt and passes by our team of Operatives.

The Operatives pull the bags off the conveyor belt, and these are baled up for recycling. If any of the bags are too wet or contaminated (with food waste, or other substances), they will be sent for use as fuel (RDF). They are not sent to landfill.

People might not be aware that the kerbside recycling bags are manually sorted by a team of Operatives.

Our staff wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE, including tough protective gloves and safety glasses), and follow hazardous and non-conforming waste procedures because we do often find nappies, dog poo bags, clinical waste, broken glass, cigarettes and rotting food in kerbside recycling bags.

Not only are these items hazardous to our Staff; they are likely to contaminate the surrounding materials in the bag resulting in all the contents of the bag being rejected rather than recycled.

We export our paper and cardboard bales to specialist facilities, who will inspect the materials we send them when they arrive. If they do not think the quality of the materials is good enough, they will reject the load. There is generally a quality % threshold; and if the quality falls below a certain percentage, the entire load will be rejected.

If paper and cardboard become wet and dirty they are likely to cause mechanical problems when processed; so the bales will be rejected.

If plastic bales are too dirty, or the load contains too much black plastic, single use plastics or non-recyclable plastics; they too will be rejected.

Rejected materials are separated and used as fuel (RDF) in an incinerator to generate electricity and/or heating.

Whilst incineration is preferable to landfill, it is still not as good as re-use through recycling.

If materials in the kerbside recycling bags or bring banks are contaminated (for example, by food waste, nappies, dog poo) or if paper/cardboard is too damp, then these materials are separated and sent for use as “Refuse Derived Fuel” (known as RDF).

So rather than being recycled, these materials are burnt in an incinerator to produce electricity and/or heating.

RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel) contains all the waste materials that cannot be recycled – such as black plastics and single use plastics.

Materials that are contaminated, and therefore cannot be recycled, will also be used as RDF.

Hazardous waste (such as asbestos) is not included in RDF. Hazardous waste must be treated via other processes prior to disposal; and generally ends up in landfill.

In terms of fixed plant inside the depot, Mayside Recycling uses a series of conveyor belts, different types of magnets and a baler.

Mobile plant includes forklift trucks, front loaders, tail lift trucks and hook lifts.

The sorted, but loose,  materials are moved along another conveyor belt and fed into a baler.

This applies pressure to the contents as they pass through the chamber, to form a bale. This is basically a very dense, large brick which is wrapped to prevent the materials coming loose again.

Bales are wrapped to prevent the materials coming loose. Heavy duty wire is used to tie the bale in a similar manner to a brown paper parcel. These bales are stacked, ready for shipping.

The bales are lifted onto trailers using a forklift. They are very dense, and all the same size so can be stacked effectively.

When they reach their destination (at a specialist recycling facility) the wire holding the bales together can be easily cut, and is recycled.

Generally, Mayside sends paper, cardboard and plastics to specialist recycling facilities in the UK. The exact destination will depend on which recycling facilities are able to accept the materials on any given day or week.

The tin cans and metals taken from the kerbside bags and Bring Banks are baled and sent to the UK.

All materials from Guernsey’s Bring Bank and kerbside recycling bags are recycled either in the UK or EU.

Different types of plastic are recycled in different ways; so the first step is to sort them. Plastics might be sorted depending upon their colour (optical sorting), or the type of plastic they are made from. There are lots of different ways in which plastics can be sorted, so it really depends on which method the facility chooses to use – and what end product they intend to make.

Next, the plastics are washed to remove labels, adhesive and any remaining food residue. Then, the plastics are shredded into granules in a process called resizing. At this point, any non-plastic items can be more easily identified and removed using a series of magnets.

Next, the granules are classified and separated by testing their quality. The density of the plastic granules is tested by adding water. The less dense particles will float, where as the denser materials will sink. Testing is also undertaken to determine how thick or thin the particles are, using a small wind tunnel. Samples may also be taken from each batch to test melting point and colour.

Finally, the particles are smashed and melted together to create pellets, which can be used in future production. This process is called Compounding.

Not all recycling facilities will undertake every step of this process; some may perform one or two steps and then sell the material to another facility, who complete another step, or the remainder of the process. And some facilities may not be able to process certain types of plastic, so these will also be transferred to other facilities.

The paper is first sorted into different types and grades. It is washed with a special detergent to remove all the inks, glues and staples and is then mixed with water to create a “slurry.” By adding different materials to each batch of slurry, different types of paper can be created including magazines, newspaper, or office paper which has a heavier “gsm” (grams per square metre).

The paper slurry is spread out into very large sheets using rollers, and after it has dried it is rolled and cut up into sheets.

This process is not undertaken in Guernsey: we ship paper from kerbside bags and bring banks to specialist paper mills who have the required machinery and space to mulch, wash, form and dry out the paper. The paper mills then sell the end product on to printers and manufacturers.

Cigarettes contain a type of plastic called “cellulose acetate” which breaks down into microplastics.

Many people drop their cigarette ends into the drains, thinking they are made of paper and will simply decompose. But it can take up to 15 years for a cigarette end to creak down into smaller plastic fragments, whilst also releasing many toxic chemicals.

Mayside Recycling does not accept cigarette ends; but you can separate them out from your black bag rubbish and take them to the Longue Hougue Waste to Energy station. Channel Seaways kindly ship the cigarette ends to a specialist recycling firm in the UK free of charge.

No.

The glass collected with kerbside recycling bags and bring banks is taken to the Longue Hougue Waste Transfer Station.

Commercial glass is processed by States Works.

No.

The food waste collected from households on every bin night is taken to the Longue Hougue Waste to Energy station.  

Please contact the Recycling Team at the States of Guernsey for further information; or if you need a new food caddy or food bags.

Commercial customers seeking to dispose of food waste should contact Island Waste.

Green Waste can be taken to Mon Chouet Green Waste site, or  the green waste skips at Le Friquet Garden Centre.

The bin nights and bin collections are managed by the States Works Team at the States of Guernsey.

You can check your bin night at www.gov.gg/mybinnight.

The provision of kerbside bags is managed by the Recycling Team at the States of Guernsey.

If there is no voucher included at the end of your current roll of blue or clear bags, please contact the Recycling Team via recycle@gov.gg.

Please email HR@grgcorp.com to find out more about current vacancies within our Group.

We signed up to the Guernsey Employment Trust (GET) Charter in April 2019. We have provided a case study for them to use in training and workshops, in order to demonstrate how some simple adjustments can make the working environment more accessible for disabled people.

If an Employer has any questions about committing to the Employment Charter or making adjustments in the workplace to support people with disabilities; we are very happy to share our experience with you. Please get in touch.

The Guernsey Recycling Group [trading as GRG] incorporates Island Waste Ltd, the Guernsey Recycling Scrap Metal Yard, Galaxy CI and Mayside Recycling in Guernsey.

We also manage the Abbey Waste recycling facility in Jersey; BKP in Southampton, and operate in the Cayman Islands.

As part of the Guernsey Recycling Group, Mayside Recycling assists GRG with various community projects.

Most recently, we provided plastic bottles for a Guernsey Literary Festival exhibition outside St James, in order to raise awareness about plastic pollution in the Oceans, as highlighted by Lucy Siegle.

Mayside Recycling are often contacted by schools and interested groups, and we are very happy to show people around our facility to show people how the process works.

Please contact Mayside via 01481 247599, or email us at: mayside_recycling@cwgsy.net.

You can also contact GRG via 01481 247786, or email us at: info@grgcorp.com.