THE LIFECYCLE OF RECYCLABLES

What happens to your recyclables once they get to the Recycling Center? We use recycled shopping buggies to roll in the materials we get from your vehicle or from the front sidewalk After Hours Drop Off area. If your materials are bagged up into categories (which we request that you do) then it is a quick and simple process to weigh them when you want payment or credit for them. Even if you don’t want payment or credit, the bagged materials are so much faster to work with in the sorting step that comes next. Some people put their materials in containers and then want the empty container back and in this case, we empty the recyclables into a shopping cart. This way we can roll the recyclables over to the correct bin.

Once inside the building, the recyclables are sorted into self dumping 1 cubic yard hoppers or barrels. When one of these hoppers is full, a forklift gets it and takes it to a holding area. Some materials – aluminum cans, mixed paper, phone books and hard back books are kept stored in the hoppers while others are dumped out into the appropriate holding area. We use both inside and outside storage. Some materials have to be kept dry – newspapers and magazines, office paper, mixed paper and books – while others can be stored outside – corrugated boxes, glass, plastic and steel. Because of its high market value, aluminum cans are stored inside in the hoppers so they can be locked up each night.

Your recyclables are sorted into the following categories: clear glass; mixed color glass; aluminum cans; steel cans; scrap steel; phone books; hard back books; paperback books and mixed paper (junk mail); newspapers and magazines; office paper; corrugated boxes and paperboard; #1 plastics; #2 plastics; plastic bags; Styrofoam. These are the sorts we have to do in order to send the right material to the right market or plant/mill.

The next several articles will look at what we do with the materials here at the Recycling Center, where they go when we ship them out and how they are then turned into a new product

GLASS - Although all the glass bottles and jars go to the same mill, they have to be sent in two different containers – one for the clear and another one for the mixed color. We load these containers with a skid steer loader and put approximately 20,000 pounds of glass in each load. The glass is then taken to a processing facility in Atlanta, GA. Here the glass is sent over conveyors and screens and under magnets in order to remove any steel and other contaminants before going to the bottle plant, also in Atlanta. In order to melt this glass, their furnaces are heated to 1,800 °F which is 1,000 °F less than what is required to melt the raw materials to make glass the first time. This reduction in heat is a great energy savings to the bottle manufacturer and they are interested in getting as many used glass bottles and jars as possible. Contaminants for this manufacturer include: ovenware, vases, drinking glasses, mirrors, dishes, plastic – anything that is not a bottle or jar. These different glass items have different melting temperatures than the glass in bottles and can cause fractures and loss of pressure tolerance in their bottles making them unstable for their bottling customers. We do not expect you to separate your glass into the different color categories, however, we do ask that you are careful not to break the bottles – for your own safety as well as ours at the Center. Also, it is easier and less dangerous to remove contaminants from a bag or box of whole glass bottles and jars than from lots of broken pieces. Glass is one of those products that can be recycled over and over again without losing any of its quality. We ship out approximately 800,000 pounds, or 400 tons of glass bottles and jars each year.

Next month will focus on aluminum and steel. If you have any questions, please contact Marta Turner at rfrecycl@roman.net or call her at the Rome/Floyd Recycling Center – 291-5266.