Facilities

The Authority's Recovered Materials Processing Facility (RMPF) receives, sorts, processes and prepares for market materials collected through the Authority's recycling program. The RMPF is owned by the Authority and operated by a private contractor. It opened in 2009 and replaced the Authority’s previous residential materials recycling facility and commercial materials recycling facility. The nearly 138,000-square-foot, $40 million facility has a processing capacity of 750 tons per day.

Processed Materials

The RMPF processes the following materials:

Containers

• Plastic containers less than five gallons, except plastic foam
• Steel cans
• Aluminum cans
• Drink boxes
• Milk and juice cartons
• Glass bottles and jars

Fiber

• Newspaper
• Magazines/Catalogs
• Unwanted mail
• School/Office paper
• Phone books
• Paper bags
• All cardboard boxes (includes beverage cartons, tissue boxes and dry food boxes)

The Process

The RMPF has three tipping floors: one for residential fiber and one for commercial fiber on the east end of the facility, and one for containers on the west end of the facility.

Containers

Containers are delivered to the facility by route collection trucks or Authority tractor trailers. The containers are then pushed onto a conveyor belt where bulky non-recyclable material is removed by hand.

The steel is then pulled out using a magnetic conveyor belt, loaded onto a truck and sent to a private facility to be processed. The remaining material is then conveyed to a sorting room where workers remove non-recyclable residue (trash). The material continues on to a glass breaker where the glass is crushed. The crushed glass is provided to a recycler or sent to the landfill to be used as cover.

Next, an eddy current separator repels the aluminum from the line. The aluminum is baled and shipped to market. The remaining material, mostly plastic, is sent to a series of optical sorters, where the material is scanned and its resin code (type of plastic) identified. Plastics #1 (polyethylene terephthalate or PETE) and #2 (high-density polyethylene or HDPE) are pushed off the conveyor belt using blasts of air. Plastics #3 through #7 are sorted by hand. The separated material is checked for quality and then baled for shipment.

All recovered container materials other than glass, which is loaded onto trucks loose, are baled prior to being transported to market. The residue (solid waste that was mixed in with the recyclables) represents more than 14 percent of materials the RMPF receives. The majority of residue is sent to the Authority's Renewable Energy Facilities.

Fiber

Fiber is delivered by route collection trucks or Authority tractor trailers and deposited on the fiber tipping floor on either the commercial side or the residential side. The material is then loaded onto conveyors which transport the material to a sorting room where workers remove any residue (trash) by hand. Next, the material is sent to a Star Screen System, a series of spinning wheels, that separates the paper and cardboard. The paper falls through to a conveyor and is hand sorted one more time before it's baled or loaded into a truck loose. The cardboard “floats” on top of the wheels of the Star Screen System and is dropped into a bunker. It, too, is baled prior to shipping to market.

Recovered Materials

Materials recovered at the RMPF are sold to manufacturers who process them to produce new products. The revenue from the sale of these materials is used to help offset the cost of the Authority's recycling programs. Although the value of recovered materials fluctuates with the market, the revenue from the sale of materials processed at the RMPF is generally sufficient to cover the owning and operating cost of the facility. Through the Municipal Recycling Revenue Share Program that began in 2010, 50 percent of net revenue is paid to the municipalities that deliver recyclables to the Authority.