Kerbside or home collection schemes of 'dry' materials like paper, card, plastic bottles and cans have been set up by local authorities and now cover over 90% of Hampshire households. The collected materials are taken to the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at Portsmouth, or, because recycling is so successful in Hampshire, temporarily to MRFs outside the county until a new facility has been built in Alton. The MRFs sort and process the materials received, which are sold in the market place to be recycled to produce new products.

A colossal expansion programme to increase kerbside collection schemes is still taking place.  To support the increase in materials collected, Hampshire Waste Services Ltd has planning permission to build a new MRF in Alton, with a capacity of 85,000 tonnes per year. This places recycling at the heart of an integrated approach to waste management.

As part of this programme, a  £3.6 million MRF operates in Portsmouth introducing state of the art technology. With a capacity of 42,000 tonnes a year, it is the largest to be built in the UK for sorting recyclables separated by the householder. The building, which contrasts with the surrounding industrial environment, has a modern and stylistic architectural design. Features include a 40 seat conference room and a visitors' viewing gallery together with facilities such as heated and ventilated environments with modern changing and dining facilities for staff.

Collected dry materials are tipped into the loading area (1) then slowly fed up into the hand sorting conveyor (2) to remove cardboard, plastic bags and any non recyclable items. The materials then pass on to a system of rotating dics (3), removing anything smaller than 50mm. The recycables are then split onto 2 vibrating, inclined tables (4) complete with a Velcro-like surface which holds the paper, automatically separating it from plastic bottles and cans. Thereafter paper is screened and sorted (5) into newspapers and mixed paper. The cans and plastic then pass under a magnetic separator (6) removing steel cans. Finally (7) hand sorting of HDPE, PET, PVC and aluminium.