An inside look at the new $40 million recycling plant for Philadelphia

Dump trucks rumble daily into Waste Management’s new Philadelphia Recycling Facility, carrying the aspirations of residents that their detritus will be transformed into new products and kept from landfills.

On Tuesday, one of those trucks pulled up to the plant on Bleigh Avenue in Holmesburg, disgorging a small mountain of plastic containers, bottles, cans, and cardboard. But it also dropped a metal tank, sheets of plastic, a mattress, and a basketball, none of which will be recycled.

It’s laborious to prescreen tons of items, then sort, bale, and ultimately transport them to market.

Waste Management, now known as WM, says its $40 million, 57,860-square-foot material recovery facility (MRF) will to be able to handle recycling not only from Philadelphia, but also from parts of surrounding suburban counties.

The facility uses optical sorters powered by artificial intelligence. Viewed from above, a multilevel series of conveyor belts resembles a recycling superhighway, with dozens of on and off ramps guiding paper, plastic bottles, and cans with GPS precision to separate balers, capable of handling 45 tons per hour.

The automation and increased capacity of the new plant was needed, said Rafael Hernandez Avellan, the facility’s manager. Not only does it handle the load better, but it also addresses a labor issue.

“It’s very hard to get people that want to come in and do this — standing on a line all day could be very tiring,” Hernandez Avellan said. “We’ve had a very hard time finding people to come in and fill those roles. So automation definitely helps. And with automation, we also get cleaner materials in the end. Markets are becoming more strict on the quality of material they want to receive.”

However, he said, WM has kept on a staff of 40 who sort, bail, run heavy equipment, and perform maintenance.

» READ MORE: What you can recycle if you live in Philly

The MRF became operational in August, but company officials allowed The Inquirer inside for a look this week, which is the industry’s Recycling Week. The company also held a ribbon cutting Friday with city officials.

The plant, which replaces an older facility nearby, uses newer technology to separate 160,000 tons of paper, plastic, metal, and glass a year, all of which spews at high rates along the series of whizzing belts. The old plant had a capacity of 120,000 tons a year. The new plant marks a 33% increase in capacity.

Philadelphia has its own employees who pick up and haul recycling and waste with city trucks. The city pays WM on average $72.20 a ton to handle its recyclables, and $77.49 a ton for waste. The recyclables get brought to Bleigh Avenue.

After a dump truck empties in the staging area, workers do an initial screening to remove any obvious contamination.

What’s left gets loaded on a 358-foot-long, heavy-duty conveyor belt that WM bought from the mining industry to handle the load.

As soon as glass enters the plant on the large conveyor, it goes into a device that breaks it up. The shards fall onto a dedicated conveyor and an optical reader sorts them into piles by color.

The conveyor spews a torrent of potential recyclables, as workers quickly yank out plastic bags, sheeting, and wires that can tangle gears. They heave out helium tanks and pluck out lithium ion batteries capable of igniting fires.

All those unwanted items can both damage equipment and contaminate loads. Contamination rates range from 10% to 35% per load.

The higher the contamination, the more likely it is that recyclables become waste, making it important residents place only the right items in household and business recycling containers.

After the initial screening by up to seven human sorters, automation largely takes over.

Hernandez Avellan said paper gets separated as the conveyor goes through a double screen. The process uses momentum and gravity to separate the lighter fiber from heavier products, such as plastics that fall backward onto another belt.

Optical readers scan material as it zips along, displaying the composition of the load on a computer workers can program as needed to change. In some sections, jets of air separate products from one another, blowing them onto other belts.

The streams of each product become smaller and smaller as they reach baling stations. The balers extrude large compressed blocks of material that gets staged, awaiting transport.

The bales get sold in markets throughout North America. For example, cardboard and paper, which make up 60% of the material processed at WM’s MRFs, get sold to paper companies that rely on recycling.

The market for plastics is driven by manufacturers that use recycled items in products and packaging, according to WM literature. As of now, demand for the materials exceeds supply, meaning better markets. Recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) from plastic water bottles, for example, can be turned into clothing, carpet, outdoor decking, and fill for pillows.

Further winnowing items, tin cans get separated from aluminum cans, each with a different market.

At the end of each day, the plant gets swept and wiped down.

The system’s efficiency, however, starts with residents and businesses, said John Hambrose, a WM spokesperson.

“We want to encourage our customers and everybody anywhere who wants to protect the environment to put in their recycling containers only materials their programs collect,” Hambrose said.

Typically, that’s plastic bottles numbers 1 and 2, plastic food containers number 5, aluminum and tin cans, paper and cardboard, and glass bottles, he said.

Things the MRF does not handle: batteries, food waste including greasy pizza boxes, clothing, wires, garden hoses, and propane and helium tanks.

The new system helps balance the stream toward the demand of markets, Hambrose said. The Philadelphia MRF is also set to process recyclables from Delaware and Bucks Counties, as well as South Jersey. The company is investing $1.4 billion into 40 new or upgraded recycling facilities through 2026.

“Every time we put a new plant together, we benefit from all that we’ve learned before,” Hambrose said.