Do the materials in Ann Arborites' recycling bins actually get recycled? What should you do with old batteries? And what does Ann Arbor recycle most of? These common recycling questions and more were answered during public tours of Ann Arbor's Material Recycling Facility (MRF) on Sept. 29.
Between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., more than 100 people took a tour of the MRF, which is located at 4150 Platt Rd. in Pittsfield Township and operated by
Recycle Ann Arbor (RAA). The event was part of the
Trash Talk Tour, organized by recycling advocacy organization
ZeroWaste. The Trash Talk Tour also included a bike tour of the area's circular economy, an introduction to
Michigan Stadium's Zero Waste program, and a Zero Waste Fall Festival at Ann Arbor's
Kiwanis Thrift Store.
Megan Lunsford, RAA's marketing and communications manager, says interest was strong, and the event hit its cap of 120 registrants early. As a work site with many safety precautions, the MRF isn't typically open to the public, but organizers say the tour is part of an effort to be more transparent about what happens in Washtenaw County after residents put materials in their recycling bins.
During the tour, the facility was shut down for safety reasons, but MRF employees were on hand at five stations representing stages of the recycling process — from curbside collection trucks to the facility floor to the final bales of recyclable material. Staff explained how each stage of the sorting and bundling process works and showed short videos of machinery and employees in action.
Processor Brian Stewart says six employees sort about 600 pounds of material a minute, removing what he calls "tanglers" like hoses, Christmas lights, metal, or any other contaminants likely to cause the sorting machinery to seize. Artificial intelligence also plays a role in the process at the next station, with robotic arms darting into the mix to pluck out items missed by the human sorters.
Here are five big takeaways from the Trash Talk Tour.
1. Your curbside materials really do get recycled in Ann Arbor and, more broadly, in Washtenaw County.
RAA CEO Brian Ukena pushes back hard against a common perception that recycling doesn't matter because our recyclable materials
just end up in landfills anyway. Cases like that are highly publicized but not typical, he says.
"There are unscrupulous people out there, but that is illegal, by the way," he says of dumping materials meant for recycling.
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Doug CoombeRecycled laundry detergent containers at Ann Arbor's Material Recycling Facility.
During the Trash Talk Tour, RAA posted signs at each station showing exactly where various materials go for sale to factories that can recycle the gathered materials. The money RAA gets from the sale of the materials goes back into operating the MRF and other recycling services for the Ann Arbor community.
Most materials are sold within about 200 miles of Ann Arbor, with some going to Dundee, Mich.; Canada; and Ohio.
"Our paper, our fiber, goes to Wapakoneta, Ohio, to a Pratt mill there, and that's a tree-free mill," says MRF General Manager Curt Curavo. "It's all recycled material in there, and that will be made into more Amazon boxes."
2. The MRF's union staff are doing great work, but you can help them do even better.
The MRF has been in operation since 1978 but changed hands a few times. It remained closed and unused for several years before RAA won a contract to operate the site about five years ago.
Curavo says it's common for MRF jobs in other areas to be temporary or part-time, but RAA has created 60 well-paying, full-time, union jobs.
"That's a rarity in the waste industry. In my previous jobs, the drivers might have been [in a union], but nobody else was," Curavo says. "All of our team members are UAW, and they're not only getting a living wage, but a thriving wage within the industry."
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Doug CoombeCourtney Franklin and Greg Carter demonstrating a recycling truck at the Ann Arbor's Material Recycling Facility tour.
The MRF can recycle a number of different types of materials, but several categories of fully-recyclable material are still a problem, including very small containers or pieces of paper smaller than about three inches by three inches.
"The perfect example is the K-cup," Curavo says, referring to disposable cups used for single-cup coffee makers. "They have plastic and the foil on top, and those are certainly recyclable. But the problem with items that size is … you just can't capture it."
He says the MRF's sorting process and machinery is more likely to pulverize small pieces of plastic or paper into residue than to recycle them.
Lunsford says small pieces of paper like Post-It notes can be a problem as well. However, if you're also recycling some envelopes, you can stick smaller pieces of paper in them, and the machines will have an easier time capturing all of your paper recycling. And leaving the top of a can slightly attached to the can will make it easier for machines to capture the small metal lids as well.
3. Plastic bags are a problem.
Multiple MRF employees emphasized that bagging recyclables in plastic bags is a big problem. Curavo says the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) won't allow employees to cut open a sealed bag because they don't know what's inside, and it will just go to the trash. It's better to collect recyclables in open paper bags.
Curavo says there are places to recycle plastic shopping bags, but the MRF isn't one of them.
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Doug CoombeSorting machinery at Ann Arbor's Material Recycling Facility.
"Plastic bags are going to show up, and they're going to get wrapped around shafts and blind my sorting equipment, which means lower-quality [bales of recyclables]," Curavo says.
He says he also doesn't like putting employees in harm's way to remove those tangled bags.
"Instead, you can take those same plastic bags to our
drop-off station," he says.
4. Paper, paper everywhere means a million-dollar fire suppression system.
As visitors come to the tip floor of the MRF, they will see a mountain of mixed recycling, about 85% of it composed of paper and brown cardboard.
"We call it 'the Amazon effect' because, wow, we get a lot of cardboard," Stewart says.
That's an important reason residents should not dispose of batteries with their curbside recycling. Stewart showed a short video of a paper fire that started at the MRF after a large machine ran over a couple of small batteries.
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Doug CoombeThe tip floor at Ann Arbor's Material Recycling Facility.
"You can imagine, with all this dry material in here, a fire like that would be devastating," Stewart says.
Lunsford says RAA installed a fire suppression system that cost about $1.5 million dollars. She says it's a great safety feature but notes that the eagle-eyed Stewart often catches small fires before the suppression system does.
5. Not all materials are best suited to MRF, so try other options.
Ukena says that people mean well, but they often aren't sure what's recyclable and what isn't.
"They just put it in the bin and hope" that it gets recycled, he says.
He says Styrofoam is difficult to recycle in any meaningful way. It typically gets turned into plastic photo frames, but when those break, they can't be recycled again.
Batteries, plastic bags, and small pieces are a problem for MRF, and employees urge residents to find other places to recycle those.
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Doug CoombeOratarus Johnson explaining the sorting process at Ann Arbor's Material Recycling Facility.
Curavo recommends the drop-off station at 2950 E. Ellsworth Rd. in Ann Arbor, also run by RAA, for "hard-to-recycle materials." RAA also runs a recovery yard on Jackson Road for construction demolition material.
Additionally, batteries and other electronics are "fully recyclable, just not here or at our drop-off station," Lunsford says. She recommends bringing them to office supply stores like
Staples, which has an electronics take-back program.
Visit
ZeroWaste.org and
RecycleAnnArbor.org for more information on local Zero Waste and recycling programs.
Sarah Rigg is a freelance writer and editor in Ypsilanti Township and the project manager of On the Ground Ypsilanti. She joined Concentrate as a news writer in early 2017 and is an occasional contributor to other Issue Media Group publications. You may reach her at sarahrigg1@gmail.com.
All photos by Doug Coombe.