How do they separate recyclables

Recycling is actually sorted with the support of machines, technology, and equipment, each uniquely designed to capture specific types of material out of the recycling stream.

MRFs have anywhere from 30 — tons of recycling move through a day — there is no way this could all be sorted by hand! There is still plenty of human power working to ensure your recycling is sorted, bailed, shipped, and turned into something new, but very few workers are actually sorting the material. Many individuals work on creating the technology and equipment, maintaining operations, selling the material, inspecting the bales, and educating the public.

You can read more about the economic benefits of recycling here. Before any of the material enters the facility, it is weighed. Most MRFs have a scalehouse, where giant scales weigh the truck and material together and then subtract the weight of the truck to determine how much material is coming into the facility.

These numbers are important for both the municipalities or companies hauling the material and the facility processing it. Once weighed, the truck empties its contents onto the tipping floor. The material is then hoisted onto a main feed conveyer belt, where it begins its journey through the facility. The first stop is usually a pre-sort, this is where humans who are still smarter than machines recognize and remove things that can damage equipment or injure people further down the line.

These are items that should not be recycled at the curb — from Christmas lights to machetes, MRF operators have seen it all! There, a largely automated system of conveyor belts, screens, magnets, and lasers separates materials so that they can be sold to metal and plastic recyclers and paper mills. Of the recycling facilities in the U.

The driver checks to make sure no oversize objects, such as a car engine, are in the mix. Smaller items fall through the screens and continue down the conveyor belt. Those molds end up in manufacturing plants where they are turned into aluminum sheets and reused for different products.

An aluminum sheet may be turned into beer or soda cans. It might be turned into products like decorative or DMV-issued license plates, aluminum foil, or pie plates. This leaves plastic. Plastics come in several types depending on the resin used to create that item:. How can all of these different plastics get sorted? Some plants use workers to check each item and sort it by number. Newer plants have infrared sensors that use light to determine the type of plastic and sort them based on that information.

Some plastics are not worth recycling and go into the trash instead. Styrofoam is one of them. PVC has to be converted into a powder at specialty plants due to the toxins it releases if it is melted down. Other plastics are melted down and turned into new items like clothing, carpet fibers, water bottles, soda bottles, etc. The more that gets recycled responsibly, the better it is for the planet.

You may be able to recycle more than you realize. While waste districts used to mail guides, more are skipping that step and expecting people to look for the latest update online.

Recycling programs vary widely across the country because they are administered locally, usually at the municipal level. When a municipality or hauler picks up recyclables, they send the materials to a materials recovery facility MRF for sorting.

Processing begins after materials are sorted, and sometimes additional sorting is still needed even if items are sorted at the curb. Whether a recycling program accepts separated or mixed materials depends on what kind of equipment is available at its MRF. Some MRFs are classified as dual- or multi-stream, meaning they do not accept paper products mixed with other materials. Multi-stream recycling is often seen as more inconvenient and registers lower recycling rates because residents have to separate their recycling.

Contaminated recyclables are, in effect, unrecyclable and must be sent to a landfill. Single-stream facilities which are more common than dual- or multi-stream accept mixed recyclables because they are equipped with technology that can sort the different materials. That technology can use mechanical agitation, vacuums, magnets, gravity, and more to separate a newspaper from a milk carton from a soda can. Tossing all accepted materials into one bin makes recycling much more convenient for residents, so single-stream programs typically see higher recycling rates.

Multi-stream facilities can sometimes be retrofitted to process mixed recycling, or some waste management companies find that building a single-stream MRF makes sense financially and administratively. When either of those things happens, check with your local public works department or waste hauler to learn more about what you can recycle and if you need to acquire a new recycling container.

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