Western Placer Waste Management Authority’s Post

Transcript

Here in Placer County, we make recycling and disposal easy. You toss your garbage, Hauler collects and then we sort. For those of us who are lucky to live or work in Placer County, recycling is as simple as that. Hi, I'm Emily Hoffman, the public information officer for the Western Placer Waste Management Authority, which we call the Walkman. I'm standing in the middle of our materials recovery facility, or the Merc, which is where all recycling happens for Western Placer County. This facility has been recycling materials for our community since 1995. And we're so excited to be in the process of building new state-of-the-art recycling facilities, including a new materials recovery facility that will be completed by early 2025. Residents and businesses throw garbage and recyclables into a single bin, No need to separate anything. On garbage day, it's picked up by their local garbage hauler and brought to our campus here in Roseville. When your garbage reaches the Wackness campus, it's dumped out of the trucks and onto the tipping floor. Then a loader moves the garbage onto conveyor belts where it heads upstairs to begin the sorting. Initial sorting in the Merc is done by large rotating drums called trammels, which separate the materials by size. There are large holes inside these traumas that allow smaller materials like aluminum cans, paper, and plastic bottles to fall through for more sorting by machines, while larger materials like cardboard boxes and bulky plastic items go straight through the trauma for manual sorting. The next round of sorting is done by screens that sort the smaller material further by size, dimension and weight. Some containers are sorted using magnets for ferrous metal like tin cans and Eddy current separators for non ferrous metals like aluminum and Eddy. Current separator is a series of rare earth magnets that create an electronic field to remove the aluminum cans from the rest of the garbage so they can be recycled after the mechanical sorting. The material is fairly well separated by the time it reaches the human sorters who work in the Murph. Each sorter is looking for specific types of recyclables that can change every day based upon recycling markets. As they're picking out materials, they toss them down a chute, which leads to a bunker where the materials are stored for bailing. The final step in the Merc is bailing material for shipping. Materials like plastic bottles, aluminum cans, tin, bulky plastic, and cardboard are bundled and compressed to create large cubes called bales. Think a hay Bale on a farm that are easier for recyclers to transport. The Watchman's new Murph equipment includes state-of-the-art technologies like robotics, optical, sorters, AI. Disorders and more that will reduce reliance on humans to do the majority of sorting. Human hand sorters will instead be used for quality control, for example making sure no random pieces of cardboard end up with the aluminum cans. Another feature of the new merch will be organics recycling. SB 1383 is a state law that requires Californians to reduce the amount of organic waste that ends up in landfills, as it can release harmful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change and have unpleasant odors. While many communities are requiring their residents to sort their organic waste themselves, the Watna will utilize technologies to remove things like soiled paper products and food scraps from residential garbage bins and will recycle them for you. Lucky you, Plasser County, Utah. We sort goes for organic waste too. One of the great things about the way we recycle in Placer County is that because we sort through the entire waste stream, not just certain items that folks assume are recyclable, we're able to sort out and recycle unique items like appliances. Door knobs, CD's, textiles, and more that most traditional recycling communities don't accept because the Watna sorts all waste streams to recover. Recyclables are individual community members and businesses don't have to. The system ensures we're able to quickly respond to rapidly changing, often volatile recycling markets while achieving 100% public participation in the regional recycling program. The Walkmans unique and effective recycling system means that we're able to recover recyclables from places that don't typically. Offer recycling options such as gas stations, parks and more. Anytime anyone tosses a bottle or a can in the trash anywhere in Western Placer County, they're recycling. Recycling is incredibly important to us here at the Wattman and we're grateful to have created solutions and transformed wastes into resources for nearly 30 years, exceeding the states recycling requirements year after year. And we're so excited for the new materials recovery facility to increase our recycling rates sort out. Organic materials and create a more sustainable future for Western Placer County.