Ever Wondered What Happens to Your Rubbish and Recycling?

Inside the World of Waste: A Tour of the Lakeside Energy from Waste Plant

Have you ever wondered what really happens to the stuff you throw in your bins at home? I recently had the chance to find out – and trust me, it was fascinating!

Along with six other women from the AWBS International Women’s Club, I got to tour the Lakeside Energy from Waste (EfW) plant and the adjacent Materials Recovery Facility in Colnbrook, near Slough. It’s one of the places your general rubbish might end up – and what they do with it is incredible.

Arrival at Lakeside: Where Your Black Bin Bags Go

Our day started with hard hats, hi-vis jackets, gloves, goggles – the works. Once we were safely kitted out, we watched as lorries full of waste lined up to be weighed and scanned (yes, for radioactive materials – just in case!) before dumping their loads into a huge waste bunker.

Then we were taken up to the Operations Control Room – safely behind glass and away from the smell and, um… rats! From here, giant cranes grab the waste – one scoop holds up to 7 tonnes – and drop it into massive furnaces that run 24/7, all year round. Each burner processes around 27 tonnes of rubbish per hour, at temperatures of around 850°C.

Turning Trash into Power

Here’s the cool part: all that burning waste creates heat, which turns water into steam, which powers turbines, which generate electricity.

Lakeside doesn’t just power its own site – the surplus electricity is sold to the National Grid which is enough to power a town the size of Slough

Before the exhaust gases are released into the air, it’s cleaned using a mix of carbon and lime to remove harmful substances. Emissions are carefully monitored and reported to local councils and the Environment Agency.

We even peeked inside one of the furnaces (from a safe distance!) and walked across see-through floors – not everyone’s favourite feature!

What’s Left Behind?

After all that burning, around 20% of the waste becomes ash. But even this isn’t wasted:

Metals are pulled out and recycled
Ash is used in the construction industry – added to things like tarmac and breeze blocks

Pretty impressive, right?

Lakeside also has a clever business model. Councils and companies pay to dump their waste there, and the plant makes extra money by selling electricity and recyclable materials.

From Trash to Treasure: The Materials Recovery Facility

Next, we walked over to the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). This is where your recycling goes – and let me tell you, it’s a whole operation!

Here, 13 types of recyclable materials are sorted. Lorries dump everything into a huge hall where it's loaded onto conveyor belts. Then it’s time for the machines – and people – to do their work.

Workers (about 20 in each shift) manually remove non-recyclables (at the start and end of the line (called “negative picking”), while machines use air jets and scanners to sort paper, plastics, metals and more into neat bales ready for resale.

The MRF runs from 6am to midnight, every day. And yes – humans are still a vital part of the process!

Final Thoughts: What Can We Do?

One of the 7 AWBS members attending, environmentally-astute Rosie Deane (of What On Earth – a company that helps other companies go Net Zero), helped put things into perspective. While burning waste isn’t perfect (it still releases carbon dioxide – a natural byproduct when burning), it’s better than landfill, which produces other culprits like methane.

What goes to landfill vs. what gets burned varies by council – so it’s worth checking how your area performs. I was pleased to find that Surrey is doing fairly well.

But after seeing the sheer volume of waste, it really hit home: we all need to do better.

Here’s what we can all try:

Stop buying cheap, poor-quality items
Reuse, upcycle, or repair things you already own
Donate or sell unwanted items instead of binning them
Learn what really can (and can’t) be recycled in your area

And yes – even with all our modern technology, we still need people to manually sort recyclables. So let’s make their job easier by putting the right stuff in the right bin.

More Facts from the Tour

Lakeside was opened in 2010 by Prince Philip, who spotted it being built from Windsor Castle & became intrigued to find out more about it!
Lakeside EfW is a joint venture between Grundon and Viridor.
The plant cost £160 million to build and is expected to last 25+ years.
It handles 440,000 tonnes of waste per year (correct as of 2013).
There’s even a third furnace for clinical waste, which burns at 1000°C!
Every year there’s a planned maintenance week, where the burners are turned off & cooled in turn with about a week in between (when no waste gets processed) and that’s when the turbine gets serviced.
Solar panels were added in 2013, further boosting the plants energy output.

Seeing the full journey of our waste – from bin to burner – was eye-opening. It reminded me how much of an impact our everyday choices make, and how important it is to reduce waste before it even reaches the bin.

Want to make a difference? Start at home – one item at a time.