Where Does Your Recycling Go?
When I help lug our enormous bins of paper, cans, and cardboard down the driveway every Thursday morning, I often wonder: where does all of our recycling go? In this post, I’d like to answer exactly that question.
In 2012, Americans generated a whole 251 million tons of trash and recovered about 26% of it through recycling. That’s 65 million tons of material running through our recycling system!
In Massachusetts, the process begins when recyclable Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) gets transported from your curb to one of nine Materials Recycling Facilities (MRFs) located in Auburn, Boston, Westborough, Peabody, Brockton, Avon, Billerica, Springfield, and Rochester.
A majority of MRFs in Massachusetts accept single stream recycling, meaning they can take one bin with all of your paper and containers and separate them at the facility. Recyclables go through a sorting process where they are split into cardboard/paper, plastics, glass, aluminium, and steel using conveyor belts, blowers, and magnets. Once organized by the MRF, each material goes through its own unique recovery process.
- Glass is sorted by color, crushed into cullet, and sold to manufacturers. Cullet is a crushed-up powdery form of recycled glass. One interesting use for recycled glass is in construction material like concrete to improve their visual appeal. Other than in construction material, cullet is also used to make new glass bottles.
Aluminum cans are cleaned and loaded into a furnace to create molten aluminium. In the molten aluminium container, impurities float to the top in a mass called dross. The dross is removed and the molten aluminium is examined for cleanliness. Finally, the molten aluminum is casted into portable shapes like ingots and sold to manufacturers.
Recycled steel is restored through a process similar to aluminium. Unlike other materials, aluminum, steel, and glass are known as an “infinitely recyclable material”, which means they don’t lose value during each recycling process.
Plastics are sorted by material and color, cleaned, and crushed into pellets. These pellets are sold as raw materials and can be used in carpeting or certain fabrics or can be further processed to make new containers and bottles. The categories plastic is sorted into are:
HDPE – High-Density Polyethylene: used in things like milk jugs, soap bottles, and those outdoor plastic chairs.
PVC – Polyvinyl Chloride: a common construction material used to make PVC pipes and as a substitute for decorative wood.
PET – Polyethylene Terephthalate: used in bottles, plastic clamshell packaging and microfiber cloths.
PP – Polypropylene: often used in clothing, plastic furniture, and hinges.
Paper is further sorted into grades and sent to paper mills in bales. Paper grades describe the quality of paper based on where it comes from. For example, old newspapers are of a lower grade than printer paper because newspapers are often already made from recycled material. Once sent to the paper mill, the material is turned to a pulp with chemicals, heat, and shredding. The pulp is cleaned and sent in rolls to create new paper products.
I hope this post gave you guys a good idea about how the recycling process generally works. If this sparked your interest and you’d like to learn more, here are a few sites and blogs that helped me learn about this topic.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/infrastructure/structures/97148/wg1.cfm
http://www.container-recycling.org/index.php/issues/single-stream-recycling
https://www.gpi.org/glass-recycling-facts
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills-plastic-papers.html
https://www.aluminum.org/product-markets/aluminum-cans
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-material-recovery-center-2877733
https://earth911.com/business-policy/business/paper-recycling-details-basics/
https://www.paprec.com/en/understanding-recycling/recycling-plastic/sorting-plastic-waste
https://plasgranltd.co.uk/how-is-plastic-recycled/
https://www.norcalcompactors.net/processes-stages-benefits-plastic-recycling/
https://www.recyclingbins.co.uk/blog/how-is-recycling-sorted/
https://sustainablebrands.com/read/press-release/what-happens-to-paper-when-it-is-recycled