The Solid Wast Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) has reported their goal is to divert 75% of the items going into the landfill. A big part of that is for all of us to participate in Reducing our use of plastic, Reusing what we can, and then Recycling what can be recycled.
To be better educated on all that, four members of the Ohio Chapter made a tour of our local Rumpke Recycling Center. It began with a one-hour presentation in their main office from two of their Education and Community Relations personnel. They reviewed the scope and process of the recycling center, what items they can handle in the center, and who is getting these materials to produce new products and recycle back into our use.
As avid recyclers, we had lots of questions!
When the presentation was complete, we donned yellow vests, safety glasses, and headsets so we could hear from our tour guide as we walked throughout the recycling plant.
Here’s what we learned from this fascinating presentation and tour:
- The facility has huge machinery and rollers, conveyor belts, blowers, and optical scanning equipment to sort out the massive amounts of items that get picked up in our neighborhoods and trucked to the plant.
- That said, there are a lot of human interventions required to take out items that are not recyclable and are also very dangerous. These include:
* radios, clocks and other items containing batteries that can explode and start fires
* “tanglers,” which include:
* hangers, hoses, and other long items that can get caught, such as:
- plastic grocery bags, which are a HUGE problem - and there are many of them put into recycling bins. They get caught in the equipment and literally have to be cut out with razor blades to free the equipment and resume operations.
- those long brown sheets of paper that shippers stuff into boxes to cushion their product. One way to combat this particular item is to cut or rip it into smaller pieces, so it doesn't get tangled in the equipment.
- They can accept all kinds of glass - remove the metal lids and put in your bins separately. Rumpke now has a large glass recycling plant in Dayton.
- All aluminum and steel cans are acceptable. Anything with toxic materials in them, i.e., paint and aerosol cans, propane tanks, and batteries need to go to the SWACO Household Hazardous Waste drop off located at 645 E. 8th Avenue, Columbus, which is on the corner of Essex and E. 8th Ave.
- All types of plastic bottles are accepted - leave the lids on the bottles since they are also plastic and recycled together. The clear water bottles are most valuable because they don’t have color in the plastic and are more easily reused. They also take colored containers, such as laundry detergent containers.
- They will also take yogurt cups, butter tubs, and deli plastic tubs with lids.
- There is less newsprint these days, which they still take, but they do get plenty of cardboard boxes to recycle. Pizza boxes are also accepted, as long as they are not saturated with too much grease. (But even those can be put in compost bins.)
- They had rooms full of 6x6x6 foot cubes of aluminum cans waiting to be picked up by companies that will reuse them to make new soda and beer cans. Each bale includes about 50,000 cans! They will also often get “rejects” from the Busch plant to be included in the recycling process.
- A special processor also crushed and baled the volumes of paper to be recycled.
Items need to be rinsed out - no need to scrub them, just be sure that most of the material once in them is removed.
Another major item that can be kept out of the landfill is food waste. Many neighborhoods around Central Ohio are participating in Composting programs, through grants from SWACO. It is a great way to reduce the amount of material that ends up in your garbage bin, and thus in the landfill, thereby reducing the amount of methane released into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas that holds more than 25 times more warming power than carbon dioxide, and is a major contributor to climate change.
With industrial composting, you can include all food items, fruit and vegetable seeds and rinds, egg shells, coffee grounds, even MEAT scraps and BONES, as well as paper napkins, paper towels and Kleenex. There are many sources that will gather your non-plastic, plant-based and compostable plates, cups, utensils and bags, which are all compostable materials. Here is a link with more info about composting: