Ever wonder what happens to your recyclables after you place them in the bin? In the spirit of RecycleMania, a group of students went to find out for themselves what the next life has in store for their old exam papers. Last Friday, UR’s biodiesel bus braved the blustery weather and took the group to tour the Monroe County Recycling Center, located at 384 Lee Road.
The facility is also a transfer station where trash is temporarily transported to on its way to the landfill. Luckily for this “trash”, salvageable cardboard, metal, and other recyclable materials are often sorted out so that it never reaches the landfill. Every truck that comes into the facility weighs in at the state of the art scale system which works very much like an EZ-Pass, so that no attendant or paper ticket is needed.
The recycling facility itself contains two seperate areas for industrial and curbside materials. Many grades of paper, from thick, high quality paper board to lower end newspaper, come presorted to the industrial side. You see, paper can be recycled up to 8 times and each time it is the fibers are broken down in the process. As a result the end product is a lower grade of paper than what is was originally. Printing companies will often have to send perfectly good paper to the facility due to typing errors or tiny mistakes that the average person would never even notice. The good news is that higher quality paper that can be recycled more times is worth more money and and in turn helps keep the facility running smoothly.
On the other end of the facility, students learned what happens to curbside or “blue box” recyclables. Although Monroe County residents throw all their recyclables into one bin, the materials get sorted by the hauler before it reaches the facility. Then, two large conveyor systems (one for paper and the other for containers) efficiently sort materials to various platforms where they are either mechanically or hand sorted. Mixed recyclables travel up the container conveyor and go through a magnetic separator that pulls the metal cans from the rest of the recyclable containers and drops them to a bin below. Then the conveyor moves through an air “knife” to blow off plastic, sending it to its own separation line, other containers are hand-sorted. Small mixed-color broken glass falls through a screen, is crushed in a grinder, and goes to a separate outdoor bin with the rest of the glass. Once material is baled it goes to various companies to be processed, recycled, and ultimately resold as new products in the market.
The center also houses an office for electronics recycler, Sunnking, who just so happens to be the company that UR contracts with. Not only does Sunnking accept old computers, printers, keyboards, and the like, but they will take pretty much any device that plugs in.
Later that evening, students gathered to celebrate the RecycleMania competition. They assembled in CLC for some piping hot chocolate, food, music, and games. All in all, it was a very good day for recycling.
So how is UR doing in RecycleMania? Not too shabby at all. While we still have some work to do in the Grand Champion contest (we are ranked as 116 out of 261), we are kicking some cans in the Per Capita Classic at 32 out of 331! We are also doing great in the Targeted Materials categories ranking 24 out of 198 for paper, 14 out of 203 for cardboard, and 25 out of 194 for bottles and cans. Visit the webpage for the most recent results which are updated weekly.