November 15, 2024

Where does our recycling go? An inside look at a MRF

This blog is part of our ‘Boost your Recycling Knowledge‘ series.

You’ve filled your recycling bin and are feeling pretty good. But recent news reports touting a paultrey 5% plastic recycling rate have made you question your efforts.

The reality is that
85% of the materials Arlington residents
put in their curbside bin are recycled.

Recycling is a commodity market. After being sorted at the Material Recovery Facility (MRF, pronounced ‘merf”), bales of plastic, cardboard and paper are sold by the ton to manufacturers who will make new products from those recycled materials. As consumers demand more products made of recycled materials, demand increases and the recycling market grows stronger.

Where does Arlington’s Recycling go?

There are eight sorting facilities in Massachusetts and Arlington’s recycling goes to a MRF in Peabody run by Republic Services. The job of the MRF is to sort materials (by size, weight, magnet and optic sensors), bale sorted items and sell them.

Step by Step Process

Zero Waste Arlington recently toured the Peabody MRF to learn exactly what happens to Arlington’s recycling. Here is a step-by-step overview of how your recycling materials are sorted.

Recycling trucks come in full and get weighed. After the truck dumps its contents on the MRF floor, the empty truck is weighed.
tDid you know? Arlington produces approximately 5,000 tons of recycling per year (less than half the weight of our trash).
The recycled materials are dropped onto a conveyor belt where workers manually take out items that can damage machinery. Tanglers like ropes, chains, christmas lights, hoses and plastic bags (the biggest issue) often get caught in the machinery and stall productivity.
tDid you know? Plastic bags are MRF’s #1 enemy since they get tangled in machinery. Recycle all plastic bags and other plastic film at the grocery store and they will be able to recycle it.
Through the use of gravity, cardboard is separated out first.
tDid you know? Even soiled (empty) pizza boxes can be recycled.
Next, material goes over spikes that chop up all glass. Unfortunately, there is no current manufacturing facility in Massachusetts that uses recycled glass, so it is not recycled.
tDid you know? Most glass becomes ‘beneficial use material’ and is used to cover ash at the Peabody landfill station next door.
Next, a shaking screen sorts out small materials (caps, paper smaller than a credit card, condiment cups, straws, etc.). These small items cannot be sorted and so they become trash.
tDid you know? You should avoid putting anything smaller than a credit card in your recycling bin since it is too small to process.
Then a conveyor belt with optical sensors sorts out plastic based on transparency. Workers also manually monitor plastic materials for contamination (non-plastic items that may have slipped through the other steps). Finally, colored and harder plastics are separated.
tDid you know? The Peabody MRF sells some of its recycled plastic to a carpet manufacturer in New York.
Finally, metals are taken on a conveyor belt with a magnet that attracts steel. Since magnets don’t attract aluminum, the materials then go through an eddy current, an electrical field that repels aluminum.
After all materials are sorted and processed, they are baled and sold to manufacturers who will make new products from recycled materials.

This video shows how materials are sorted in a MRF

The recycling market changed significantly in 2018, when China stopped purchasing US recycled materials. Prior to 2018, municipalities did not pay for recycling. Now they do. Since 2018, states have had to build the infrastructure to sort and sell our own recycled materials.

The demand for recycling commodities fluctuates, but cardboard currently has the highest demand in Massachusetts. So be sure to recycle those cardboard boxes!

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