Primary Processing

Our Smart Materials Recovery Facility (SMRF) receives and sorts materials from yellow and blue lidded recycling bins from a  large number of Councils in NSW. We service more than one million people from homes north of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, along the east coast to Port Stephens and inland to Tamworth.

At our SMRF on the NSW Central Coast, our council recycling partners drop off kerbside collected material. We then sort the material into a number of different streams including rigid plastic, soft plastic, paper and cardboard, glass, aluminum and metals. The end recyclable materials are then baled and sent on to our processing partners to be remanufactured into new products, ultimately contributing to a circular economy.

Our recoverable material streams:

Rigid plastic

Rigid plastic is an easy to recycle material stream that includes products such as HDPE milk bottles, PET water bottles, food containers and other household containers.

Soft plastic

iQRenew is a proud supporter and early adopter of the kerbside soft plastic recycling program – Curby. As part of this program, participating councils and residents can recycle their household soft plastics by placing them in a sealed bag with a Curby QR tag, and place it in their existing yellow lid recycling bin. The collected material is then sent to our processing partners to be made into new products such as fence posts, road bases, pellets for new packaging and a range of other products.

Paper and cardboard

At our SMRF, paper and cardboard are sorted to make a high grade feedstock for manufacturing. We are a large supplier of fibre to our offtake partners.

Glass

Our Virtual Quarry on the Central Coast recycles and processes glass, of all colours, collected through Council recycling. The glass is collected and aggregated at our SMRF and then sent to our Virtual Quarry to be washed and crushed in a range of different sizes and grades. To date, our Virtual Quarry has processed over 200,000 tonnes of glass to produce a high-quality manufactured sand substitute for use in a  range of civil and construction applications.

Aluminum

Aluminum is separated from other materials and metals and sold locally. Aluminum is primarily to make new drink cans.

Steel and bulky metals

Steel cans and bulky steel items are recovered using magnets and distributed to local steel merchants.

What happens at our SMRF?

MRF Infographic - Sorting