Recycling got real after Blue Planet II hit our TV screens last year. The heartbreaking images of our oceans filled with plastic bags, and the guts of sea creatures crammed with bits of bottle, were a poignant warning.

It is now one of the great battles for the planet's survival.

Fortunately, we've never been better placed to do something about it.

A new £22million recycling centre built by Hounslow Council is helping pick up thousands of tonnes of plastics and other recyclable materials and make sure they get processed rather than chucked straight into the sea.

Reporter Martin Elvery met operations manager Dan Smyth who showed him around the Materials Handling Facility along with Hounslow Council's cabinet member, Guy Lambert.

Dan has a tough job on his hands operating this state-of-the-art centre which has strict targets to try to increase the amount of recycling in the borough, but he's a tough cookie too, with years of experience operating oil rigs all over the world.

Under his watchful eye, paper, plastics, cans, glass, textiles and more collected from the streets of Hounslow, are being processed and shipped all over the world as part of the multi-billion pound global recycling trade. Your average can of Coke or water bottle bought in a Hounslow newsagent could end up being turned into a component in a factory in Indonesia, China or India.

Dan Smyth who is Operations Manager at the Materials Handling Centre.
Dan Smyth, who is Operations Manager, worked on the oil rigs before this

It's a massive business and the council hopes to profit from it as well as keeping its own streets clean.

Dan shows me one of the state-of-the-art recycling vehicles that the council bought to serve the new facility.

These are ingenious contraptions worth some £160,000 each and divided into a series of compartments for different products - paper, card, glass etc.

When the operators tip your recycling boxes into them outside your house, a series of motors and compressors crushes them to oblivion so that the truck can carry much more than you would ever think.

Title: Three of the state-of-the art recycling vehicles that can sort waste at the kerbside before transferring it to the centre. Pic. Martin Elvery. Clear for use by all BBC newswire partners.
The recycling vehicles that you might see outside your home can sort waste at the kerbside

Each vehicle calls at roughly 750 homes per day, so it's a tough, physical job. Shifts last about eight hours.

Dan explains: "There's been a huge increase in interest in plastics lately because of the amount it's been in the news. The value of it has really gone up. But the value of card has slumped. Many authorities are paying to get rid of it because they don't do recycling at kerbside, it's contaminated with bits of plastic and it's worthless. Whereas with these vehicles, we're still able to command a good rate for cardboard because it's very pure. We've got some of the best value materials in London here."

Once the vehicles get back to the centre after a long day, they unload into a series of bays in the main waste management centre. The material is then either transferred to artic lorries for shipment or - in the case of plastic and cans, is fed into a giant hopper where it goes through a series of ingenious electromagnetic sorting machines that separate the metal from the plastic.

Dan shows us around the main facility. It's very noise with forklifts, JCBs and trucks constantly coming in and out unloading huge quantities of materials.

The products are then squished into bundles by some extremely tough packing machines, like giant spring-loaded arms. These - we are told - if they broke free, are so strong they could pretty much knock down the outer walls of the building.

At the end of it all, you get incredibly tightly packed half-tonne bundles of card, plastic and aluminium looking a bit like colourful hay bales.

Here's what they look like:

The half-tonne bundles of recycled materials after sorting.
The half-tonne bundles of recycled materials after sorting.
The bundling machines pack the materials into half-tonne bundles.

Because of the sorting process, they are extremely pure in content and so can be sold off as high grade recycling to approved traders around the globe.

The centre employs some 150 people, and istening to their accents, it's obvious they are from a huge number of different ethnic backgrounds. But there seems like a good team spirit here and they seem genuinely pleased to be working somewhere they are making a difference.

I meet recycling-vehicle driver Boses Rutakirwa who has worked for the council for nine years.

Boses Rutakirwa drives one of the state-of-the-art recycling vehicles at Hounslow Council's recycling centre
'You feel you are doing something good to help," says driver Boses Rutakirwa

"It's making a big, big difference to people in the borough, now people are recycling much more. They feel safe recycling more because they know we're going to be picking it up," he says.

"When we started, people were mixing things they shouldn't be mixing, but now most of them know what to do."

Boses says he and his team are tough with people who don't sort their materials into the boxes provided for them. They put a ticket on saying it can't be collected. But he says this soon gets them doing it the right way as they don't want it building up outside their homes.

He says his team will also talk to people as they go round the streets to try to educate them in the right way to recycle.

"I enjoy it," he says.

"When you see the news you see the damage plastic is doing to the fish so you feel you are doing something good to help."

And it's not completely risk averse for the hard-working staff either. Dan tells us there is one fire each day in the UK at recycling plants like this and he shows us the huge fire pumps and water towers that would be used to deal with such an eventuality. It really is impressive kit.

When the centre was being built last year, work had to be stopped because new fire regulations had come in. This means all water used to put out a fire now has to be able to be contained and not poured down the drains, because it could be contaminated with waste. So effectively the facility has to be surrounded by a series of barriers and flood gates so that if there is a fire and the sprinkler systems go off, it will turn into a giant swimming pool.

Ultimately this is one impressive, space-age facility, but it's nothing if people don't get behind it.

There are many ways you can help. One is to make sure you use the recycling boxes and bags that are provided for your house by the council. If you live in flats, you will have communal collection points. Try to sort the waste into different types of recycling as thoroughly as you can. Don't put plastic bags into your recycling or any other goods such as hard plastics that can't be recycled because - as I saw at first hand, this completely messes up the system - and don't put batteries in your recycling as they can explode.

Other than that, it's really very simple. Do your recycling, and you'll be going some way to helping make sure we don't destroy the planet by choking it with plastic before the next generations get a chance to enjoy it.

At the same time, you'll be helping Hounslow Council make money from its recycling which it can reinvest in council services and keep things running even at a time of huge government cuts.

Dan, Boses and the rest are there to help you, so happy sorting!