Some Good Questions:
Why must we separate plastics, metals, etc. when other cities have commingled pick-up?
Grand Junction curbside recycling customers are asked to sort materials into five categories:
- Glass
- Paper
- Corrugated
- Paperboard
- Metal and Plastic containers
Pre-sorting insures that the material is marketable and reduces on-the-job injuries to recycling workers
Mixed materials cannot be marketed. Paper mills recycle paper, not glass, and steel mills don’t want plastic in their mix.
Major cities and large national companies with lots of financial backing have what are called MRF’s (material recovery facilities), set up to sort materials mechanically. These are typically 3-4 million dollars just to build. Operational costs are enormous.
The City of Grand Junction has no such facility. Instead, almost everything must be manually separated.
It is much faster and easier for the individual to do the initial sorting in the kitchen. It is also safer. We have had serious injuries of our workers trying to remove lids from glass bottles or sort glass from steel. Glass can explode like a bomb if pre-heated by the sun (a piece of exploding glass just missed one of our employee’s jugular vein).
What Happens to My Recycling?
After you separate material and set it at the curb, we empty it into different compartments in the trailer. We then separate glass by color. After picking up several thousand pounds of material by hand each day our hard working crews bring it back to the facility to complete the sorting process. We then bale, store and eventually load the material onto trucks. It is labor intensive process and one that requires the assistance of local residents to successfully complete.
Sorted Materials Get Recycled
The other issue is the end use of material. Cities that allow participants to mix their materials together end up sending lots of it to the landfill. Anywhere from 8 - 26% of the material picked up in those “single stream” programs is trashed.
Glass in the Mix
Programs that collect glass mixed with other materials cause huge problems for paper mills that may end up landfilling large quantities of contaminated paper because things like glass and metal damage their machinery and cannot be easily removed from the paper.
When different colors of glass are mixed together, the glass is no longer marketable and becomes basically worthless. In too many instances mixed glass has been landfilled ( giving recycling programs a bad reputation.) Some programs have begun marketing their mixed glass as road base and landfill cover or in other experimental programs. We sort our glass by color and then market it to processors who are actually producing new bottles.
Why doesn’t GJ CRI accept glossy corrugated cardboard?
The gloss on cardboard contains additives which are detrimental to the process of making new corrugated cardboard. These products are considered undesirable by the cardboard mills. Again, transportation costs and mill specifications prohibit the collection of glossy corrugated cardboard.
