My Clearwater
How Does Single-stream Recycling Work?
If it all goes in one bin, how do we sort recycling?
Here in Clearwater, the city uses single-stream
recycling, which means all recyclables are collected
in a single container, your blue bin. Then, it goes to
a material recovery facility (or MRF, which sounds
like “murph.”) At the MRF, materials are separated into
different categories, such as cardboard, paper, glass, metals and
plastic. These materials are sorted through several processes.
First, items are placed on a conveyor belt and picked through
12 MyClearwater
manually to remove any
obvious, large contaminants
and tanglers, such as hoses,
clothes, or bagged items that
get tangled up in sorting
equipment. Items in plastic
bags are taken off the belt and
thrown away. This happens
because there is not enough
time to break every bag open
and hope it contains only clean
recyclables. (This is a very fast
process!) Unfortunately, it is not possible for workers to pick
out every contaminant.
Want to see how
recycling is sorted?
Scan this code on your mobile device.
Next, special gears separate flat fl items,i such h as paper and
d
cardboard from bottles, cans and other materials. Threedimensional
items go through the gears, while flat, paper items
move over them. When tanglers get through to the special
gears, they wrap around them and cause them not to be able
to turn properly. Heavier items cannot get between them.
An optical scanner is used at most MRFs, including the one
that separates Clearwater's recycling. It identifies the types of
items on the belt, and then an air jet separates plastics No. 1
and No. 2 from plastics No. 3-7 and metallic items. This is
why plastic bottles need to be empty! If they have liquids in
them, they will not be able to be moved by the air jet. Metals
are separated by large magnets that pull them out of the
stream.
Once everything is sorted, the recyclables are then pressed
together into 1-ton bales of each material. These bales are then
sold to companies that will break down the materials and use
them again.
When these bales are contaminated with non-recyclable
materials, such as “yuck!” items that may have made it through
the sorting process, they can taint the new products made
from that material. Contamination increases recycling costs
and degrades the quality of materials, reducing the ability of
the materials to be recycled.
Learn more about what is and is not recyclable at
myclearwater.com/recycling.
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Know These Terms
MRF - material recovery facility
Contaminants - any material that should not be in the recycling stream
Tanglers - plastic bags, hoses, cords, clothes, etc.
Yuck! - food, liquids, diapers, etc.
/recycling