How They Mix and Match Your Recycle Trash

by Ben Gardiner

When you see the recycle things you have carefully sorted get all dumped in a single bin, doesn't it make you wonder why we sort? Here's a gee-whiz answer.

Our sorting really means that we are separating the recyclable things from the trash that has no recycle value. Then that big truck takes all your junk away. And now, in their own words, here's what the Scavenger people do with it:

"The recyclables are sorted at Recycle Central, the new recycling facility at Pier 96. Inside, spinning disk screens send bottles and cans in one direction, float paper in another and further sort it into independent streams of newsprint and mixed paper (magazines, cardboard and junk mail.)

"A giant vacuum system sucks computer paper, envelopes and letterhead off conveyer belts and automatically sends clean material to baling machines. A powerful magnet pulls steel and tin cans off the sorting belt and flips them into a large storage cage. Aluminum cans fly off the belt as if by magic thanks to another machine called an eddy current separator."

Now don't you feel better about it?