Recycling material at the MRF

By Lara Fominoff

WATCH: Lethbridge’s recycling: from curbside pickup to shipping

Nov 3, 2019 | 8:42 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The city’s curbside recycling program is now almost six months old, and besides occasionally watching the recycling truck pick up the blue bins and methodically emptying them – not many people know or have seen what happens to all of those cans, all of that cardboard and all of those plastic containers residents collect every couple of weeks.

Tim Romus has been a waste and recycling driver for the last 15 years. His route includes hundreds of stops and he sees it all; from people who who’ve put propane tanks and other hazardous items in the garbage, to those who chase down the truck dressed only in a towel, to residents who have gotten to know him and give him Christmas presents each year. He says one of the biggest issues in Lethbridge is the wind blowing the bins over.

“Everything in the cart is not bagged. Or, it’s not supposed to be bagged. And if the cart tips over, obviously there’s a huge mess.”

He says one of the best things people can do is wait until their carts are full before putting them out. That way, there’s less of a chance of it blowing over.

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Romus tracks each house he goes to on a computer in the truck, makes note of whether he can or can’t empty it (carts too close to one another, or up against a fence, or knocked over can’t always be emptied), the reason for that, and then moves on. If he spots items in the bin that are dangerous or that aren’t supposed to be in it, he also makes note of that.

Each truck can hold several tonnes of material, and when the pressure gauge in his truck gets to a certain level, he knows it will be difficult to compact anymore, and heads for the Materials Recovery Facility in north Lethbridge.

Steve Rozee is the Waste Recycling Centre Manager. He let Lethbridge News Now see what happens to all of the material, from the time it gets dumped onto the centre’s massive floor, to the final baling and packing.

Once the material is dumped, anything obviously problematic or dangerous will be pulled out by hand- then a front loader will push all of the material to one side of the floor and it will be fed into a “metering bin” where a drum rotates it and a conveyer belt picks it all up to move along the system.

Some of the dangerous and non-recyclable material people put in their bins

“The first stop is the ‘pre-sort room’ where a line of workers pick out anything dangerous, not recyclable or hazardous to the system,” he explains. “If everybody put exactly perfect things in their recycling all the time, a MRF wouldn’t need a pre-sort room. But we find that that’s not the case. So, the staff here are looking for items that might pose a danger to themselves and their co-workers.”

They’ve found things like oil, baby diapers, dog poo, metal cooking containers, piping, bedding, knives, needles, bullets, propane tanks, and lawnmower blades.

They also look for things that can get caught in the equipment and cause heat issues. Plastic film can also wrap around equipment and cause problems.

“We want people to think about the fact that we have staff doing some sorting by hand here. So, what you put in your cart will be likely touched here by somebody in the facility, and we want them to be be safe.”

Once everything leaves the pre-sort room, it goes up a conveyer belt as it’s sorted again, and to a cardboard separator. The cardboard goes onto a separate pile and other recyclables like plastics and metals continue on.

Another room for newsprint and mixed paper quality control line is staffed by people who sort it all out. If they see card board they can drop it directly into a storage area below through the floor. They can also drop mixed paper into a separate bunker in the same area.

Another container sorting room is staffed by five people usually- where the plastics are sorted into different categories -  mixed plastic- goes to another processor, and then two grades of high density plastics (HDPE) – colour grade, and natural grade – at the end of the line, any extra fibres are found and sorted by someone. They also sort beverage containers for recycling, and aluminum pie plates.

Sorted plastics

An “Eddy current” at the end of the conveyor belt for aluminum cans creates a reverse polarity and it gives aluminum a kind of ‘shove’ as it goes to a divider flap. Any garbage still in the system falls onto another belt and goes into a trash compactor.

All cardboard, newspaper and mixed paper will then go through a baler- which creates compact packages or cubes of each type, along with aluminum or other steel cans, and the mixed plastic and two types of HDPE. All are stored separately in containers in the baler. The operator can control which material is fed through the machinery.

The system can process up to 8 tonnes an hour, but on average, 3-4 tonnes an hour is what is currently needed. A bale can be made in 3-5 minutes.

Rozee says the quality of the recyclables in Lethbridge is between 95 and 98.5 per cent pure and a company called “Waste Management” markets all of the recyclables for the City. The paper products are sent to North American mills; some are located in the Edmonton area, some in the northwestern U.S., and other products are sent to eastern Canada.

“We’re tracking things to an actual recycling plant with a reputation for recycling. It’s not going on a container, and ‘I don’t know where it went.’ We’re tracking it to a recycling facility.”

He adds that it’s a buyer’s market right now, so if the materials aren’t sorted properly or if they contain a lot of contaminants, it’s extremely difficult to find a mill to have it recycled.

For the most part, residents are doing a great job, half a year into the program.

“Before curbside recycling the residential waste diversion rate was 20 per cent,” says Rozee. “A lot of that was coming from the recycling stations in town and other programs. Our most recent audit five months into the program puts the diversion rate at about 35 per cent.”

Through education and outreach he hopes that number can increase. There is still about 10 percent recyclable material in residential waste that could be going to the MRF.

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