What happens to those recyclable items after you put them on the curb in Kansas City, Missouri?
Well, they're taken to the WCA's Material Recovery Facility in Harrisonville, Missouri.
WCA sorts and processes roughly 5,300 tons of recyclable material at this facility each month.
“As you can see, there’s good recyclable material, but also you can see where the community is dumping full plastic bags of residue,” said Marty Oxman, MRF Site Manager. “You can see a large piece of wood, things, of course, that’s not meant to go into the system, but they do.”
Items that are taken to the facility are then sorted through a drum feeder.
“You can hear the drumming now. What the drumming is doing is giving an even flow of the material so it can go through the system,” Oxman said. “You can hear things like glass breaking. You can hear things that shouldn’t be in here.”
Once it goes through the feeder, crews take a closer look to make sure no prohibitive items go through the system.
“We’ll get anything from a tire to a boulder, to anything through the system," Oxman said.
He said the pre-sort team is an important part of the process.
"It’s their goal, it’s an integral part, to make sure it gets removed from the system,” Oxman said.
It’s then sorted: mixed plastic, aluminum, steel, and other items.
“Aluminum cans, tin, and steel, those are your bulky ridges, so that’s a mix of everything. HDPE natural, which are your milk jugs,” Oxman said.
Later, it’s packed in large bundles for further inspection before distributed to different vendors.
“Understand that a little bit goes a long way and making sure you only put what’s supposed to into the system,” Oxman said.
Commonly mistaken items that cannot be placed in those recycle bins are plastic bags, Styrofoam, and glass.
However, there is Ripple Glass, a recycling company dedicated just for recycling glass. For drop off locations, click here.
There are local grocery stores where you can recycle your plastic bags. You can also recycle them to Bed of Bags, where they make mats for the homeless using plastic bags.
