Find out what really happens to all of the things you put in your blue bin
By Denise Trowbridge, New Orleans CityLife, April 2004
To some, it is almost a religion of sorts — at least, of sorting. Emptying, washing and rinsing, then hauling empty tuna cans, soda bottles and milk jugs, old newspapers and out-of-date phone books to the curb is practically a ritual. Then, once a week — like magic — they all disappear. All that’s left at the end of pick-up day is an empty blue bin, waiting once again to be filled.
The fate of curbside recyclables seems to be one of New Orleans’ great mysteries. Almost everyone has a theory — some say recycling is an elaborate ruse, that all of the cans and bottles are transported directly to the landfill. Others are adamant recyclers who only buy products in packaging that can be processed by the city’s curbside program. But most of us just put the bin on the curb once a week and don’t think twice about what happens to its contents.
So where do all of the bottles and cans you throw in your blue bin actually go?
The Pick-Up
It starts with a large purple truck. A fleet of these six-wheeled bandits scour the city on Thursdays and Fridays collecting the contents of the bright blue bins from the 46,000 households who participate in Orleans Parish’s curbside recycling program. According to the New Orleans Department of Sanitation, BFI — the contractor responsible for New Orleans’ recycling program — picked up 13,115 tons of recyclable materials last year. That’s an average of 570 pounds from each participating household.
But collection and pick-up are only the first of many stages in the recycling process.
Sorting it all out
After the curb, the next stop for empty cans and bottles, discarded paper and cardboard boxes is the BFI recycling processing center in Metairie, where the items are sorted, baled and then sold to manufacturers who turn them into new products.
When the trucks arrive, the recyclables are commingled — meaning they are even more mixed up and messy than they were when you threw everything into your bin at home. The truck drops the items onto the ground, where a Bobcat loader is waiting to shovel them onto a conveyor belt. The belt then carries them to the sorting line.
Although BFI did not return phone calls regarding questions on the recycling process, CityLife caught up with Brian Carr, an MIT graduate and computer consultant who now lives in Vancouver, Washington. As part of an extended adventure road trip across America, Carr worked as a sorter at BFI in New Orleans in 2001. His adventure, as well as his time at BFI, is chronicled in detail on his Web site, www.brian.carr.name.
The sorting process is labor intensive. Carr says that employees sometimes work the line for up to 12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days each week, depending on the volume of material collected. "I got the impression that the shifts were so long because recycling was getting more popular in New Orleans," Carr says. "We just had a lot to sort and had to keep up."
The first sorter is stationed at the bottom of the conveyor belt that lifts the materials to the main line. Here, a rake is used to remove cardboard, paper and newsprint from the commingled materials. The paper is then dropped into a room below, where it is hand-sorted by type. "Paper can really mess things up," Carr says. A newspaper, he says, tends to separate into pages that just flutter around everywhere instead of going where they are supposed to. "The best thing you can do in New Orleans is separate paper from the rest of your recyclables. It makes the sorting process faster and much easier." That’s why the city of New Orleans and BFI recommend that paper be placed along side the bin in a paper bag, rather than mixed in with the other items.
After the paper is removed, the rest of the recyclables are dropped into a machine that "looks like a giant, perforated cement mixer," Carr says, where a magnet removes the steel and tin cans. Glass, which is heavy and falls to the bottom of the machine, is directed to a separate sorting line, while the rest is dropped onto the main line.
"Glass is a low priority," Carr says. "If we were understaffed, we wouldn’t sort it at all. And when we did, we only grabbed the clear glass," leaving all the colored glass mixed together. Glass is not an economical item to recycle because there isn’t a market for it. Demand is so low, recycled glass often sells for only $9 to $29 per ton. "BFI had a ‘yeah we’ll take it and we won’t put it in the dump’ approach," Carr says. "But recycling glass is more of a public service than a money maker."
To address that problem, Yarrow Etheridge, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Affairs, says the city of New Orleans is planning to buy a machine that will turn discarded glass into an aggregate that can be used to make asphalt.
The Main Line
Back on the main line, known as the plastics-metals line, there are six sorting stations, each dedicated to a particular item. The workers at the first station remove milk jugs. Those at the second single out soda bottles and clear plastic. The third is responsible for colored plastics, like laundry detergent containers, while the fourth station’s job is to catch all of the items the others may have missed. Two people work at each station, and as the conveyor belt carries the recyclables past them, each worker grabs their designated item and throws it into a shredder, which drops the pieces into an 18-foot-wide bin below the line.
Here, accuracy counts. Recycled materials are commodities and the cleanliness and purity of the final material determines their value. Any sorting mistakes lower the market price. For example, a one-ton bale of clear No. 1 PET plastic fetches $340, according to current prices from Recycling Manager, a national recycled-material price service. If the sorters have a bad day and too many other types of plastics accidentally end up in the bale — such as green No. 1 PET and No. 2 HDPE plastics —it may only sell for $80.
With recycled commodity prices often low and always fluctuating, BFI is dependent on a few high-priced favorites to subsidize the cost of recycling less valuable materials like glass. The current favorite is the aluminum can, which at current rates brings in $1,120 per ton. The automated aluminum separator is the fifth stop on the sorting line. The machine uses jets of air to blow the cans into the correct bin. "BFI really likes aluminum," Carr says. "The money they make from cans subsidizes all of the other recyclables."
After aluminum, only two stops remain — the worker at the sixth stop sorts out any items the others may have missed; the last stop is the Dumpster.
Why is that in the trash?
How did that perfectly reusable, plastic sour cream container end up in BFI’s garbage can? Most of the items that end up in the trash at BFI are there because the person who put it in their blue bin didn’t follow directions. "People are inevitably throwing things into the bin that either can’t be recycled or that the hauler doesn’t accept," says Dr. Robert Thomas, the director of Loyola University’s Center for Environmental Communications. "And if every person throws one thing in the bin that can’t be recycled, it adds up to thousands of items that BFI has to throw away."
Sneaking that broken light bulb, No. 5 plastic yogurt cup or dirty pizza box into the bin won’t magically turn it into recyclable material. And if BFI can’t recycle it, it ends up at the landfill. "I used to sneak things into my bin because I really wanted them to be recycled," Carr admits. "But, as much as you really wish something could be reused, it’s going to end up in the trash."
But sometimes recyclable items end up in the landfill, too. It’s simple economics: if the material has low or no value, it’s often cheaper to throw it away than it is to recycle it. "If you put newspapers in your bin and they get wet in the rain, they’ll be sent to the landfill," Thomas says. "Wet paper has no value, so they have no option but to throw it away."
This, Thomas says, is contrary to public perceptions about recycling. When most people throw an empty beer can or milk jug into the blue bin, they’re thinking of it as an environmental issue, not a business process. "As much as die hard environmentalists hate to admit it, recycling is a business first, an environmental cause second," he says.
Recycling processors store bales of materials until they have accumulated enough to sell. But if the market price suddenly drops and that material loses its value, Thomas says, they have to get rid of it to free up storage space for the things that bring in a higher price. "It goes to the landfill, not by design or malicious intent," he says, "but because of the needs of the market."
New Orleans recyclers may not need to worry. "The myth that BFI is just throwing away your blue bin contents just isn’t true," Carr says. He estimates that maybe five percent of items collected ended up in the garbage, and most of them shouldn’t have been in the blue bin in the first place. "BFI likes to recycle everything. They didn’t deliberately put recyclables in the trash."
Orleans Parish residents who are still convinced that their recycling goes straight to the landfill may want to talk to Veronica White, the director of the New Orleans Department of Sanitation. She has initiated many citywide recycling awareness and education campaigns and is dedicated to increasing the number of households participating in the curbside program. She also has a challenge for disbelievers: "Follow the recycling truck and you’ll see that your items are not being taken to the dump. They really are being recycled," she says. "We work too hard to educate people and encourage them to recycle to have it all just go to the landfill."
And there may be too much demand to throw it away.
Michael Taylor, the director of the petrochemical cluster of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development, says demand for post-consumer recycled material in Louisiana far outweighs the supply. "Last year, I had a buyer for 10 million pounds of recycled plastics," he says. Taylor sent a request for material to all of the state’s recyclers, but soon found out that they didn’t have any plastic to spare. "There just wasn’t enough to go around." Taylor says the new Plastipak plant in Pineville, LA — they manufacture 30 percent post-consumer content plastic bottles for Procter & Gamble — has to import recycled plastic from other states because there isn’t a strong enough recycling program in Louisiana to meet the demand.
Making old things new again
After curbside recyclables are sorted and baled, they are sold to manufacturers who turn them into new products. Some of the final products are obvious: aluminum is usually turned into new cans and paper is turned into cardboard. But other recycled products may not be as identifiable. Plastic grocery bags can be made into plastic lumber, which is then used to construct park benches and playground equipment. Soda bottles can be transformed into warm, colorful polar fleece mittens, blankets and jackets.
Several Louisiana firms turn post-consumer material into new products. New Orleans-based Polysum turns discarded plastic into railroad cross ties. They are a low-maintenance, long-lasting alternative to traditional wood ties. Recycling Services, Inc. in Alexandria has long-term plans turn recycled corrugated cardboard into roofing felt, and Winnsboro Rubber in Winnsboro turns used tires into crumb rubber that is then used to make floor mats and air condition pads.
Ultimately, throwing cans, bottles and paper in the blue bin is only one part of the recycling equation. To complete the process, there has to be a demand for products made from post-consumer recycled materials. If consumers want to insure that recycling is a sustainable, effective way to keep usable items out of landfills, they have to make an effort to purchase things that are manufactured from recycled materials. The last step in the recycling process is the checkout counter, and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality Web site sums it up simply: "If you’re not buying recycled, you’re not really recycling."
