The Material Recycling Facility: Look What We Do With Your Recyclables

The Material Recycling Facility is a two stream processing system. Paper and containers (metal, plastic and glass food and beverage containers) are processed separately.

1-tip-floor The Tipping Floor
Recyclables are unloaded in the receiving area. A loader moves the recyclables on to a conveyor belt.
2-going-to-sorting-lines Going to the Sorting Lines
The conveyor belt moves the recyclables, either paper or containers, to one of the two sorting lines where materials are further separated.
3-container-sorting-line The Container Sorting Line
Work stations along the line allow for manual sorting by staff and automated separation by machines. Small metal items, various types of plastic containers, milk cartons and Styrofoam are hand sorted by the Material Handlers. Glass bottles and jars are removed using a screen system for the small fragments while the larger pieces and full bottles are sorted by hand. All glass is moved by a conveyor into outside bins and then taken to be stored. It is used as road building material. Metal is taken off the line with a magnet and aluminum is pulled into a bunker using an anti-magnetic Eddy-Current.
4-paper-sorting-line The Paper Sorting Line
Cardboard, boxboard, office paper and any non- recyclable materials are removed by staff and are dropped into bunkers below the sort line. Newspapers and flyers make up about half of the paper we sort and sell to end markets. As there is so much of this type of paper it remains on the conveyor belt and drops into bunkers at the end of the line where it collects to be baled.
5-baler Compacting and Baling
A conveyor system moves the sorted materials to the baler. The baler compacts the material under high pressure.Bales are secured with wires and then placed into storage.
6_heading-to-their-end-of-life Heading for Their Next Life
Baled materials are sold to companies such as paper mills, steel smelters or plastic recyclers. Recyclables are used to replace natural or newly made materials such as trees or aluminum taken from mines. Recyclable materials are made into new products such as newspaper, carpet, plastic packaging etc.