Recycling

It seems like only yesterday when recycling was a huge hassle. You used to have two separate bins for plastics/metals and paper/cardboard. It used to be much easier to just toss all the recyclables in the trash rather than sort out all the materials for yourself. Today thanks to new recycling separation systems, this is no longer the case. The way this works is the recycling truck goes around just like before collecting all the recycling materials and bringing it to the separation plant. Next, all the materials are dumps then loaded on convener belts to be sorted. All along the belt, there are people removing non-recyclables such as plastic bags, organic materials and plastics that can not be sold to recycling buyers yet. They do this by throwing things like plastic bags into a vacuum directly above their work station, and tossing other non-recyclables off in a separate shoot. The first machine removes large cardboard boxes to be immediately bundled. After this, the rest of the material moves on to be hand sorted some more. Next the paper is removed from the plastics and metals. This is done by allowing the dense materials to fall to the next belt, while the office paper, news paper and adds are sent to the next hand sorting section then are bundled. The remaining materials (glass, plastic and metals) are then sent to a glass breaking machine to allow the metal and plastic to move on while the glass falls through the grate. Once the metals and plastics are removed from the glass, they go through another paper removing machine which uses electrical charge to remove any remaining paper and plastic bags. After this, the conveyor passes under a magnet to remove all steel products which are then bailed. The next steps are a little tricky. The conveyor belt passes under an optical scanner where it identifies and removes any remaining plastics to leave the aluminum products. And because this machine is not 100% accurate, there are workers who must sift out any other plastics and non-aluminum products from the mix. After all the plastics are collected, they are hand sorted where clear plastics, heavy plastics and soft drink bottles are all placed in different shoots. All materials that cannot be recycled are then sent to a landfill. Thanks for reading!