What Is Single Stream Recycling?

Ever wonder how your recycling gets separated?  Erin did.  I was asked about this very subject, so now you get to hear about it, too.  Most towns these days don’t have a different receptacle for each type of recycling anymore.  You throw your plastics in with your glass in with your cardboard in with your newspaper.  How does it magically get separated?  The answer, my friend, is elves.  Yes, tiny magical elves.  Okay, so maybe not. 

The process is called single stream recycling.   Throw everything together – it all goes into one truck back to the recycling plant.   Some of the benefits are simple.  The truck isn’t sitting idling emitting pollution at your house as long while it empties four different cans.  People are more apt to actually recycle if there is no sorting or storing of multiple bins involved.  The more people who recycle, the more material that can get back into the hands of manufacturers.

The same principal is used in many large office buildings.  You’re told by the building management that your trash is being sorted and recycled.  People are skeptical, as I always have been.  Single stream takes care of everything.  The sorting process is quite amazing.  I happened to be watching Eco-Tech on the Science Channel a couple weeks ago when they showed exactly how the process works (see the video below).  Of course there is some human intervention on the line, but the machinery is impressive.   At the M.R.F.  – Material Recovery Facility – they use a series of conveyor belt, tumblers, magnets, centrifugal force, gravity, and other ways to separate recyclables.  My favorite is the eddy current used to separate out the aluminum cans from the other items.  From how I understand it, the polarity of the magnets are reversed and this causes the cans to fly off the belt into a shoot. 

Watch the videos below for more info on how it all works.  Like the fact that an aluminum can has the potential to be made back into another can in as little as 60 days.  Pretty fascinating…at least to a geek like me! 

Eco-Tech Single Stream Recycling (meet MRF)

Denver tour of Waste Management facility, Dec 2007