The Environmental Society toured a recyclables sorting facility in Plano. For those who could not join us, here’s an overview of what you missed.
In the past, consumers were responsible for sorting their recyclables; plastic bottles would go in one container, glass bottles in another, etc. However, this facility handles single-stream recycling, so all recyclables can be intermingled. This facility then sorts all these recyclables and ships them to mills that can convert these materials into new products.
The process begins when trucks dump, or tip, their recyclables onto what is called the tipping floor. The stuff on this floor includes all 11 items that are recyclable and also consists of about 20% trash, which has to be filtered out later.
The material is then manually scooped up from the floor and loaded onto a conveyor. In order to reduce costs, the plant tries to filter as much as it can by machine, but there are still some things done by hand. These workers are removing unrecyclable contaminants from the conveyor:
Further down the conveyor is a machine that filters paper out from everything else. The machine uses rollers to propel the paper upward and the rollers are spaced far enough apart that paper is moved towards its own bin while everything else filters through.
Once the paper is filtered out, it is baled to save space so that as much as possible can fit into a boxcar and be shipped. About 65 tons of paper fits into a boxcar and this facility sends about 25 boxcars full of paper per month.
The facility also separates different kinds of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). The company receives about $800 per ton of clear HDPE (pictured below, center) and only $400 per ton of colored HDPE (pictured below, right). Plastic drink bottles fetch about $600 per ton (pictured below, left).
Glass bottles are separated into a pile and then they pass through a machine that grinds them into tiny pieces. The resulting product looks like brown sand and is called Eco-Sand.
All of the separated and compressed materials are then loaded into 18-wheelers, which are precisely weighed so as to not exceed the federally-mandated 80,000 pound limit, and then sent off to companies that process the materials to create something new.
The facility also had a display of products made from recycled materials, including piggy banks made from recycled money, recycled jeans, and recycled phone book yellow pages, below. The tile floor of the building was even made from recycled glass and epoxy. There was also a shirt on display that looked and felt just like a cotton shirt, but was made from recycled soda bottles.
Overall, the tour provided an interesting look into what happens to our recyclables after we are done with them. If there is enough interest, we can take another tour sometime in the future.
