Where does your drink bottle go?

You finish your drink. You drop the bottle into the blue bin near your HDB block. Then… it vanishes!

But it doesn't really vanish. That bottle goes on a long journey — a truck ride, a giant sorting machine, a wash, a melt — and comes back as something brand new.

In Singapore we call this the recycling loop. In the next few slides you'll follow one bottle all the way around it.

🎯 Your mission: learn the 5 steps of recycling — and find out the one mistake that spoils the whole batch.

Step 1 — You sort it 🏠

Recycling starts with you. In Singapore, the 🔵 Blue Bin takes paper, plastic, metal and glass. Food scraps and dirty things go in the 🟢 Rubbish Bin.

Tap an item, then tap the bin it belongs in. Try all 4!

📰Newspaper

🥫Empty tin can

🍚Leftover rice

🧴Rinsed bottle

Step 2 — The truck collects it 🚛

A recycling truck comes round the neighbourhood and empties every blue bin into one big load. Then it drives to a Materials Recovery Facility — a huge sorting factory. People call it the MRF for short.

💡 One truckload can hold the recycling of a whole street — that's why the bins are emptied together, not one bottle at a time.

Step 3 — Machines sort the pile 🧲

At the MRF everything is mixed together, so clever machines split it apart:

🧲 Magnet pulls up steel cans 💨 Air blower lifts light paper 👀 Workers pick out mistakes

A steel can and a paper sheet are stuck together on the belt. Which machine picks up the steel can?

Step 4 — Clean, crush, melt 🔥

Now all the bottles are in one pile. To become new plastic they go through three steps. The old shape has to disappear completely!

Put the three steps in the right order. Tap the chips 1 → 2 → 3.

1

2

3

🔥 Melted plastic is poured into tiny beads called pellets. Factories buy pellets the way a baker buys flour — as the raw ingredient.

Step 5 — It becomes something new ✨

This is the fun part. The old material is now a raw ingredient, so a factory can make a completely different thing out of it.

Tap each card to see what it can turn into.

♻️ Making a can from recycled metal uses far less energy than digging up new metal from the ground. Recycling saves energy, not just space.

The one big mistake 🚫

Here's the secret most people don't know. If you put something dirty or wet into the blue bin, it can spoil the clean paper around it. Wet, food-stained paper can't be recycled — so a whole bag can end up as rubbish.

This spoiling is called contamination.

Find the one item that does not belong in the blue bin. Tap it.

✅ Golden rule: empty it, give it a quick rinse, let it dry — then bin it. Clean recycling is good recycling.

You followed the whole journey! 🎉

1. Sort at home — blue bin for paper, plastic, metal, glass.
2. Collect — the truck takes it all to the MRF sorting factory.
3. Machines sort — magnets grab metal, air lifts paper, workers check.
4. Clean, crush, melt — the old shape disappears into pellets.
5. Made new — bottles become shirts, cans become bicycles.

🚫 And the one rule that beats all the others: keep it clean and dry, or contamination spoils the batch.

🏅

Recycling Loop Champion

Tonight, rinse one item and put it in the blue bin. You now know exactly where it's going.