On the day before Earth Day, Memphis recycling trucks lined up at a processing facility near Lamar and American Way Friday to dump their loads of plastic, paper, metal and glass into large piles that a front-end loader pushed together amid the “pop-pop-pop” sound of water and soft-drink bottles being crushed.
Inside the facility run by ReCommunity Recycling, the material was funneled onto conveyor belts that ran past teams of workers who culled contaminants. Optical sorters then separated paper from plastic, while powerful magnets pulled out the metals — all part of an highly automated operation that processed the material at a rate of up to 19 tons per hour.
“Our business is keeping all that (equipment) running, because the trucks don’t stop,” said plant manager James Eller.
Earth Day weekend or not, curbside recycling is on the upswing in Memphis. This year, the city is on pace to collect some 20,000 tons of recyclables — nearly triple the amount of most previous years.
After years of being stuck at around the 8,000-to-9,000-ton level for recycling collections, city officials have a simple answer for the dramatic increase.
“It was the cart,” said Philip J. Davis, the Division of Public Works deputy director for solid waste management.
Since 2014, Memphis has been methodically distributing 96-gallon carts, replacing the previously used 18-gallon gins, to households in different neighborhoods. Some 85,000 carts so far have been distributed across about 80 percent of the city, and by the end of the year officials hope to have made them available to anyone who wants them.
The larger cart size isn’t the only reason recycling levels have increased. While residents previously had to separate cardboard and paper from other commodities, they now can toss all the commodities together in the carts — a process known as single-stream recycling.
The change was made possible through costly upgrades ReCommunity made at its plant on Farrisview, just south of Interstate 240, transforming what had been a mostly manual operation into one in which automated sensors and other machines do 80 percent of the sorting.
Under a contract with the city, the Charlotte, North Carolina, firm processes and resells material collected by Memphis’ 18 recycling trucks. When commodity prices are high enough, the company pays the city for them, although in recent years the revenues for Memphis have been negligible.
To read the full story, visit .