What actually happens to your recycling after we pick it up?
You’ve booked the Pickup. Our driver has collected your bags of soft plastics, old batteries, tangled cables, worn-out clothes. The truck drives off - then what?
It’s one of the most common questions we get, and a fair one. Recycling can feel like a mystery: you do the right thing, hand it over, and just have to trust the rest happens. So let’s clear it up.
First: Sorting
As soon as your bags are picked up, our drivers weigh and pre-sort the contents right there in the vehicle. From there, everything heads back to our warehouse, where it's sorted by hand into the right streams. Once that's done, each material takes its own path.
♻️Soft Plastics
Soft plastics are baled then some become additives for road asphalt, and some are blended with other upcycled materials into kitchen benches and roof panels. Soft plastics are a growing problem in Australia with households and businesses generating roughly 538,000 tonnes of soft plastic waste a year, and without proper recycling pathways, most of it ends up in landfill or the environment.
💻 E-waste
These items go to our partner facilities to be dismantled, recovering precious metals that go on to be used in smelting plants to create new products.
👕 Textiles
Clothing and textiles are recycled based on condition: worn-out garments are shredded into fibres and respun into yarn, while wearable pieces are donated to local charity shops.
🔋 Batteries
Each battery is processed based on their chemistry. Lithium-ion batteries are dismantled to recover copper, aluminium and steel - cutting down on mining and keeping toxic chemicals out of the environment. Batteries thrown in general waste bins are a real fire risk, linked to more than 10,000 fires a year at Australian waste and recycling facilities.
💊 Blister packs
They are separated into plastic and aluminium. The plastic becomes fencing and decking; the aluminium is reprocessed for steelmaking.
Why It Matters:
Recycling only works if materials actually end up where they’re supposed to - not stockpiled, not shipped off and forgotten. That's the part we take seriously: not just collecting your recycling, but making sure it goes somewhere real.
Cheers,
The ReSmart Team
