Besides protecting the environment by saving energy, slowing climate change and reducing pollution, recycling saves money. In Milwaukee, recycling prevented more than $1 million in landfill disposal costs in 2017, and it earned nearly $1.9 million in revenues, which almost offset curbside collection costs, according to Rick Meyers, sanitation services manager for the City of Milwaukee.
In Wisconsin, 1.6 million tons of material is diverted from landfills annually, according to Recycle More Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, recycling supports 97,000 jobs and contributes to the $5.4 billion-dollar environmental industry. Nationwide, recycling generates $236 billion a year. Recycling one ton of glass saves the equivalent of 10 gallons of oil, while recycling one ton of aluminum saves the equivalent of 2,350 gallons of oil.
Despite the popularity of recycling in Wisconsin, where 94% of households support recycling and recycle regularly, recycling is facing challenges to its long-term sustainability because of global changes in the industry. According to a City of Milwaukee DPW report, although 2017 was an excellent revenue year for recyclables, changes in the global marketplace have driven prices down thus far in 2018.
In early 2018, China stopped taking foreign recyclables, upsetting world markets. “We’re in the middle of an interesting time in our industry,” says Analiese Smith, solid waste supervisor for Waukesha County. “On a global scale, China, which imported a lot of recyclables, has had growing problems with contaminated recyclables. Some of our fellow recyclers, especially on the coasts, exported a lot of their material to China. Now that that has been turned off, they are looking for other places to process their recyclables.”
Smith says the Midwest has been insulated from both the highs and lows of the market because it does a lot of recycling regionally. She says the new U.S.-led tariffs may be part of the changed picture, in addition to China’s ban on foreign recyclables. “Now we have to compete with more product that is looking for a new home,” Smith says. “The entire recycling industry is really looking at how we can make a better product and a cleaner bale of feedstock for our industries.”
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How Recycling Works
On Saturday morning during Doors Open Milwaukee, a brisk breeze blows through the cavernous City of Milwaukee and Waukesha County Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at 1401 W. Mount Vernon Ave. It is an unadorned, steel-paneled box with a footprint of about 75,000 square feet—about the size of one-and-a-half football fields. That’s not big at all when you consider that 300 tons of recyclable garbage gets processed here daily, which totals about 70,000 tons a year from 300,000 households. This is a 45-tons-per-hour facility; an efficient operation with a small footprint.
On this cool and breezy day, there is a faint odor of rotting food, and a few flies flit hither and thither around the silent and still conveyors or rest on the big bales of recyclables that are ready to be shipped out. A couple dozen people who pre-registered for the tour look on timidly but with a bit of awe at the boxy components of the single-stream recycling behemoth that miraculously sorts mountains of recyclable garbage every day. Ten percent of the daily haul isn’t recyclable at all and ends up in the landfill. Eighty percent of the recyclables come from the City of Milwaukee and 27 municipalities in Waukesha County. The rest comes from third-party haulers from other municipalities.
In 2015, the City of Milwaukee partnered with Waukesha County to buy state-of-the-art single-stream recycling equipment. Waukesha County hauls recycling from 27 communities to the facility. The City of Milwaukee contracts with Republic Services, which runs about 90 recycling operations in the country and employs 40-50 people at the Milwaukee facility. The workers wear hard hats, face masks and gloves for protection. A second-shift maintenance crew of four keeps the plant in shape after regular hours.
Previously, householders had to sort their recyclables, but the single-stream equipment allows for more efficient curbside pickup and less human intervention in the sorting process. After an initial pre-sort conducted by workers who pluck out items that clearly do not belong in the mix, all the recyclables go into one conveyor. Various technologies are used to separate the different materials.
Getting It All Sorted Out
First, old corrugated containers are separated from mixed recyclables in the top screen. Then, a debris roll screen separates and breaks glass and then removes pieces of glass and paper that are smaller than two inches using air technology to separate the paper and other lightweight materials from the glass. The newspaper and other containers are then separated by another screen which allows the newspaper to float upward, while the larger containers fall through four-inch gaps to another level. Another screen repeats this process to separate the remaining paper and the containers. A magnet is then used to separate the ferrous metals from the other containers. Then, an optical scanner is used to separate the various grades of plastic. A reverse magnet that repels aluminum is used to separate the aluminum cans from the other containers.
Finally, the separated materials are ready to go to the baler, which crushes and compacts the items and wraps the bundles securely with wire. It can make 2,000-3,000-pound bales. Throughout this process, workers do quality control and pick out items that clearly do not belong among the sorted items. The automated system, however, is 95% accurate, says Meyers.
A neat row of baled items that are ready to ship out stands in front the baler. Here are compacted masses of beverage cartons, bulky rigids (think laundry detergent tubs or kitty litter containers), colored plastics, natural plastics (milk containers), tin cans and aluminum cans. Meyers says that, on occasion, even old bowling balls get into the mix. He says the most unusual item ever to arrive at the facility was a goat’s head.
Wisconsin has a homegrown recyclable ecosystem. Crushed glass goes to Strategic Materials in Delavan, Wis., where it gets optically sorted by color. Then, it moves on to a glass furnace facility in Burlington, Wis., where it gets turned into bottles again. Meyers explains that, although glass is a low-value recyclable, it works for Milwaukee because of the demand by local brewers for bottles dovetails with the presence of other Southeastern Wisconsin industries that process and repurpose used glass. In some regions of the country, glass is not recycled because it is not profitable enough.
The paper goes to mills in the Fox Valley. Aluminum cans are the most profitable item. A single bale of about 32,000 cans is worth about $500. It takes about 60 days for the recycled cans to be processed and repurposed.
Quality Control Begins at Home
“Recycling is critically important to the state’s economic development and jobs in almost every community,” Meleesa Johnson, president of Associated Recyclers of Wisconsin (AROW) says. AROW is dedicated to helping residents recycle better and more. In Wisconsin, more than $100 million in potential annual recycling revenue is lost because 750,000 tons of recyclables are still being thrown away annually.
Recycle More Wisconsin’s website (recyclemorewisconsin.org/why) provides information on the basics of recycling, reminders of what materials are required to be recycled and reinforces the idea that quality control of recycling starts at home.
