The expression “one man’s trash is another’s man’s treasure” is near and dear to one Pennsylvania waste management facility that bridges the divide between trash and treasure on a massive scale – collecting $10 million in lost change since its inception. “What we have is a series of assorted materials,” said Rebecca Guardino, Director of Ash Processing at Reworld.
“This is about the quarter-sized particles where we usually get… a little bit of hardware, but mostly quarters,” she added. Flock traveled to Morrisville, Pennsylvania to see the operations happen in real time, where he walked around the building to watch machines sift through incinerated trash, forcing coins to fall through round holes before they’re sorted into bins.
Once sorted, the coins go through a washing station to come out shining like new and are spread out on a rack to dry. “This allows us to better sort the coins, to determine what coins are in good condition or have been damaged, but it also lets us know which denominations we’re dealing with,” Guardino explained.