Recycling

Where does your recycling go after you throw it away?

• Recycling from individual bins across campus are collected and emptied into the compactor.
• When the compactor is full, Recology picks it up, dumps them at their Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in the Industrial District, and returns them to campus.
• The recycling is sorted at the MRF depending on its material make up.
  • First, the product is sorted on giant rollers, separating out paper, cardboard, and glass from the rest.
    • Paper and cardboard are light so they float to the top of the rollers,
    • Glass is the heaviest and falls to the bottom of the rollers,
    • Plastic and aluminum make up a majority of the remaining products.
  • Glass is added to a large, spinning drum that removes dust, paper scraps, and other light materials.
  • Plastic products are hand-sorted. #2 plastics are separated out and an optical sorter further separates plastics by their numerical type.
  • Metal products, excluding aluminum, are sorted using a magnet.
  • Aluminum is extracted using an Eddy current separator which temporarily magnetizes aluminum, making it easy to sort.
• Once sorted, the materials are redistributed across the globe to be repurposed.
  • Glass products stay local due to its weight. Strategic Materials takes most of Recology’s glass product and uses it to make wine bottles for local wineries.
  • Aluminum is shipped to Anheuser-Busch in Texas where it is reprocessed into new cans. Often an aluminum can can go from the recycling bin to the MRF to a grocery store shelf within 90 days!
  • Some plastic, paper, and cardboard wastes stay in the United States forremanufacturing, while others are shipped internationally to be made into new products.
    • For example, Green Toys turns plastic milk jugs into 100% recycled toys for kids! Learn more about their process.

Images courtesy of: Lauren Kobayashi; and Recology.