The most interesting thing that I learned was how market-based recycling is. Mixed materials come in from the street and they go through a variety of filters to separate them into their various material types (aluminum cans and foil, clear and colored HDPE jugs (laundry detergent), PET bottles (soda bottles), film plastic (bags), bulky plastics (such as toys and buckets), bulky metals and mixed plastics. These materials are then baled and sold according to the market price, based on supply and demand. The bales are sold to bottle makers, steel mills, paper mills, etc. For the City it also comes down to markets: as landfill prices increase ($70/ton) and technology improves, recycling ($40/ton) is the most cost-effective way to get rid of much of the City’s garbage.
Further, pretty much every material has a market, even those containers they tell you not to recycle. Those containers are placed in a mixed plastic bale and the only time those were so undervalued that they had to be sent to the landfill was in the first couple months after the economic crash in the fall of 2008. Now they are sold, not for as much as metal or bottles, but they are sold, and many times ground into building materials or put to other creative uses. So the myth that if you include “unrecyclable” material in your recycling bin, the whole bin will be tossed into a landfill, is BUSTED. Recycle anything and everything that could potentially be recycled, if you toss it, it will definitely go to the landfill, if you recycle it, it may not. Now if everyone went by this rule of thumb recycling centers would be so overburdened as to grind to a halt. But imagine one day when there is practically a recycling ticker, your recycling bin is electronically linked to the local recycling center, you toss your yogurt cup into a slot on top of the bin and - BING - a green check appears, prices are high enough on that type of plastic and it will successfully be recycled.
The process of separating the materials is remarkable. It include operations such as:
• Bulky metal is recovered with a grapple and drum magnet
• Bags are opened and glass is removed by a trommel screening device
• Hand sorting is used to capture a portion of the film plastics and bulky rigid plastics
• Tin cans are recovered with an overband magnet
• An air system removes a portion of the paper and film plastic
• Optical sorters are used to recover PET, HDPE and mixed plastics
• An eddy current magnet is used to recover non-ferrous metals
I used to work at the Empire State Building and all trash was placed into one bin and seemingly just thrown away. I asked Thomas Outerbridge, General Manager at Sims, if he knew why an enormous building like that would just toss all that paper and he assured me that they didn’t. And this is where the recognition that recycling is a market-based building comes into play. He responded that he was sure they did not throw it all away because paper is worth too much. Most likely, he said, they sort it at the building and sell the bales themselves or at least have a deal with a recycling company to get a cut.
In 2004, Sims was selected by the DSNY to be its long term recycling partner and the City recently selected the 30th Street Pier in the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn as the location for a new state of the art recycling facility. Sims will construct and operate this facility, which will allow the City to further reduce truck traffic by minimizing the distance between their pick-up routes and the recycling facility. The Sunset Park facility will also allow Sims to expand its network of water-served facilities and grow its barge-based system of transporting recyclables on the water and not City streets. The facility is scheduled to open in the summer of 2012, although it was at one time also scheduled to open in 2007.
In February 2011, Sims Metal Management was named to the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World at the 2010 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland for the third year in a row and moving up ten spots in the rankings to number 63.
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