Plastic bottles are deposited in your local plastic bottle bank. The bottles are taken away by lorry to be sorted and then squashed into big blocks called bales.
These bales are then transported to the reprocessing factory. Here they are shredded into small flakes, which are then washed to remove any traces of the labels, or drink they might have contained.
The flakes are dried and then melted. The plastic comes out of the melting stage in long sausages, which are cut up, into small pieces called pellets. Once the pellets have cooled, they can be poured into new plastic.
To make new plastic from the pellets they are melted again and then can be used to make plastic bags, fibres for fleeces or durable garden furniture depending on the type of plastic.