The tipping floor is where unsorted recyclables from businesses, multifamily homes, and residences are first brought in to our MRF. At this point, the garbage trucks are unloading materials they have gathered from cans, dumpsters, containers, or consolidated loads from transfer stations.
Step By Step Process
Join us as we follow how recycling makes its way through the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), where it is sorted and baled to continue its journey in becoming a new viable resource.
1 | Tipping Floor
2 | Infeed Belt
The infeed belt process starts at the hopper where materials are loaded in off the tipping floor. A metering drum moves materials at a specified rate up to the infeed belt that feeds the auger screen.
3 | Auger Screen
The auger screen at the top of the infeed separates larger items from smaller items (fraction). Larger items are pushed across the top of the auger screen while smaller items fall through.
4 | Presort
Sorters stand on each side of the presort conveyor line and remove large clean cardboard to be expedited through the sorting process. Presorters also remove items that are not supposed to be in our recycling facility such as electronics, plastic bags, green waste, bulky metal items, etc. These items can damage the MRF and the sorters play a very important role in keeping the MRF running smoothly.
5 | OCC Screen
OCC Screens (old corrugated cardboard) move larger pieces of OCC and allow for smaller items to fall through. The OCC that is moved across the top of the screens continues onto a presort conveyor belt, while the material that falls through continues on to additional screens to be fractioned based on size and material type.
6 | Optical Sorters
Optical sorters combine high-resolution Near Infrared (NIR), color, and metal sensors to accurately identify a wide variety of materials moving on a conveyor belt. As materials move along the belt, the optical scanners tell air blasters at the end of the belt to blast different materials into different chutes.
7 | Magnetic Separator
The magnet separator separates ferrous metals from non-ferrous metals. Ferrous metals, which contain some amount of iron or steel, stick to the rotating drum and pass over top while nonferrous metals drop below into a separate chute.
8 | Eddy Current Separator
The Eddy Current creates a magnetic field that separates ferrous and non-ferrous metals.
9 | Quality Control Sorter
The quality control sorting stations are where our team is able to manually remove any material that may be soiled, contaminated or inappropriately passed through the recovery facility.
10 | Bunkers
Once the materials have passed through their final sorting stage they are directed to storage bins based on material.
11 | Balers
From the storage bunkers, the materials are released onto conveyor belts where they’re brought to balers that compact the materials and package them for transit to continue on their journey to be recycled into new products.