Forget what you thought you knew about how recycling works. Changes in recycling systems encourage more consumers to recycle, but place constraints on what you can toss into the blue bin.
Enrico Dominguez, the Waste Management communications specialist for Utah, described the shift.
“When recycling started out forty or fifty years ago, everything was source-separated. So you had a bin for your glass, a bin for your plastic, and a bin for your aluminum,” Dominguez explained. “Now, you just throw your cardboard and cans and plastic bottles into a bin, and we’ll take care of it from there.”
This system of collecting a variety of materials together and sorting them afterwards is known as single-stream recycling. After collection in a recycling truck, residential single-stream is taken to a materials recovery facility, also known as an MRF.
“At the facility, it’s sorted out, put into around 1,500-pound bales, and then sold to commodities companies that will make it into new products,” Dominguez said.
Utah’s main MRF in West Jordan was converted for single-stream processing in 2003, according to an article from Resource Recycling Magazine.
Dominguez indicated that single-stream processing is made possible by advances in recycling technology. “We use magnets, we use screens, we use gravity, we use optical sorters to sort out plastic bottles and containers … The technology is better than it ever has been before,” Dominguez said.
Despite industrial improvements, Dominguez pointed out that recycling continues to be dependent on manpower.
“We still have people that sort out every single milk carton and every single detergent bottle,” he said.
Bill Rudy, the recycling coordinator for Brigham Young University, manages a small multi-stream recycling operation. Rudy feels that source separation is an overall better method of recycling.
“Source-separated gives you a cleaner product,” Rudy said. “But I understand why they do single-stream. It’s the convenience factor.”
The convenience of single-stream does encourage more consumer involvement in recycling. Jennifer Rivera, the Waste Management communications manager over the Four Corners area, confirmed that “making it easy for people to participate has reduced barriers and led to much higher recycling numbers.”
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