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Welcome

There are so many reasons to reduce your waste stream, it's hard to know where to start. Unfortunately, the daily actions of most Americans are linked directly to economic factors. Thus, having our garbage collection fees included in property tax, there is no economic incentive to cut back on waste. But the truth is, there are many ways you can be rewarded for your diligence, if preserving our environment is not reason enough.

You've probably heard of the Three R's; Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse. More importantly, there is a specific order they should be read.

1. Reduce: The most effective way to reduce your environmental footprint is to reduce demand of natural resources. It is sometimes said that the cheapest barrel of oil is the one not used. That same premise applies to everything we consume. One of my favorite sayings is "Insatiable is Unsustainable."
2. Reuse: The next best thing you can do is reuse things, giving them another chance to serve their purpose. This reduces the requirement for new resources to be extracted and manufactured into new products, saving tremendous amounts of energy and material.
3. Recycle: If you had to purchase something, you no longer want it, and reuse is not an option, recycle it. Since the recyclability of everything depends on the demand for that material, try to purchase new items made with recycled content to help make recycling more viable.

Tour the Recycling Facility

Introduction

Charleston County employs a dual-stream system, meaning incoming recyclables are separated into two streams: commingled and paper. Trucks deliver the material to the main sorting facility on Romney Street, both from curbside pickup and drop-site containers. A weigh-in occurs, including detailed documentation on which route the truck serviced, allowing staff to track recycling rates by neighborhood. The commingled recyclables are dumped near the front of the facility, while the mixed paper is deposited in back. We will focus on the commingled sorting process.

Onto the Conveyor It Goes

A bulldozer moves large amounts of the commingled material to a conveyor system. One or two workers stand at the entrance to the conveyor to remove contaminants such as plastic bags before they enter the machinery. It is worth noting that you should try not to include plastic bags with your recycling as they can jam sorting machinery quite easily. The containers then feed onto a conveyor that takes them upstairs to the sorting department.




Sorting Process

Once the containers get upstairs, they are dropped onto a horizontal conveyor that allows easier sorting. Several different processes take place.

1. An overhead electromagnetic conveyor pulls all steel out of the stream and drops it into a bin.
2. Several workers remove trash, #1 and #2 plastics, and sort out the glass by color (brown, green, clear).
3. At the end of the main conveyor, an eddy-current separator makes the aluminum jump off the end of the belt into a separate bin.
4. The leftovers then drop into a pile outside the building. This material is run through the system once more to make sure no recyclable material was missed. The remainder is trash that is taken to a landfill or incinerator.



Watch a video of the sorting process at the Charleston County Recycling Center.




Watch a video of the automatic aluminum separator at the Charleston County Recycling Center.





Baling

Once the different recyclables have been separated into their respective groups, everything but the glass gets crushed by hydraulic rams into what are called bales. These are stacked outside the facility for pickup by the buyers of the recycled material. The glass is separated into three piles outside the building for pickup.

Hover over the image for description. Click for larger version.