Back in high school, I toured the old county recycling center. About 9 months ago the new bigger and better facility opened to the general public.
I think this was my favorite part of the tour. The "tour guide" didn't try to BS us.
To help control costs, the recycling center has court mandated community service works, with a few paid employees.
The process is really simple.
There's the tipping floor. Recycle trucks tip their beds and dump the recycables onto this big concete floor. A big front end loader brings it to the hopper/conveyor belt. The belt goes through the building where workers sort out the trash from the "good" recyclable things. The recyclable things got through a series of magnets and scanners to make sure everything is seperated and goes into the right bin.
After everything goes into the right bin...plastic milk jugs with other plastic milk jugs etc...the bin content gets compressed (seperately). Then the bales get stored in an area where buyers come buy...like car part manufacturers, cardboard people etc.
Pretty basic operation.
Cool!
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