5 Tips to Help You Recycle More Efficiently
GIPL board member Marti Breen (along with GIPL staff) visited Waste Pro's American Recycling facility and came away with a greater understanding for the recycling process and helpful tips for how to recycle more effectively and efficiently. Here, Marti shares what she learned.
On Friday, February 13th a group of 20+ adults and kids from All Saints Earth Stewards and GIPL visited Waste Pro’s American Recycling facility on Fulton Industrial Blvd. We went to learn what happens to all the contents we place in our blue herbies—the City of Atlanta has a contract with Waste Pro to process our single stream recycling for secondary uses.What we saw was eye-opening. The stuff that goes into our herbies does indeed get sorted, baled and recycled, but it is an exhaustive process that operates on a very thin margin. We learned that American Recycling accepts mixed stream recyclables from both public (city, county, etc.) and private (offices, churches, etc.) sources. By accepting materials from multiple sources, they have the volume to justify the investment needed to run the sorting operation.Their operation uses a hybrid automated and manual system for separating the various types of recyclables into reusable waste streams. Recycling operators balance the costs of labor against the cost of capital / maintenance for automated processing equipment. At American Recycling, they recently acquired an automated slicer that cuts into the plastic bags that contain most of the recycling from offices, but further down the processing line, there is a person that manually pulls all the plastic bags off of the belt so the waste can be further sorted.The prices charged and paid for recycled materials have varied widely over the past few years. When the contract was negotiated with the City of Atlanta, average price per ton of recycled materials was well over $100—with the drop in oil prices and reduced demand for paper from China, these prices have dropped to below $60/ton. Needless to say, the new contract that is being negotiated will be affected by these economics.One thing we can do to ensure that mixed stream recycling remains viable is to do our part to make the recycling process more efficient. There are several steps we can take:1. Increase the demand for recycled materials by buying recycled goods. Look for products that use post-consumer materials in their construction.2. Rinse all your cans and plastics. There is no cleaning facility at American Recycling. Therefore, the cleaner the material is when it arrives, the more it is worth when resold.3. Don’t crush your cans. While it might seem a good idea as more will fit in your bin that way, it actually reduces the efficiency of the sorting machines. The automated sorters tell paper, plastics, glass and metals apart by weight and dimensions. The sorters automatically assume that anything that’s flat is paper—so your flattened cans have to be manually removed further down the line.4. If you already frequent a facility that has glass recycling, take your glass to them. In the mixed stream, glass is often broken so it falls through belts and slices up the automated equipment. In addition, the equipment to separate the various colors of glass that make it most valuable to processors are not employed in most mixed stream sorting facilities. Therefore, the most efficient way to recycle glass is to do it where the consumer is already sorting it by color (like at the DeKalb Farmer's Market).5. Don't put plastic bags and Styrofoam in with your recyclables. Many grocery stores have recycling for these items. They are not processed at the mixed stream recyclers like American Recycling, so they end up in the landfill.Happy recycling!