Nothing wasted

The success of environmental conservationism teach-ins at the University of Michigan prompted a group of community members to form Recycle Ann Arbor (RAA). The nonprofit’s goals are to reduce waste through education, promote outreach and reuse programs and ensure recyclables are, in fact, recycled. This zero-waste approach has informed the organization in everything it has done for more than 40 years—including a $7.25-million overhaul of a material recovery facility (MRF).

“What we’re trying to do is honor the material as it goes completely through the facility,” RAA CEO Bryan Ukena says. “This means how we handle the material collection, how it’s run through the facility and how we treat the people processing the material.”

Local processing

Before the facility opened, the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and surrounding communities transferred recyclables to a Cincinnati facility owned by Rumpke Waste & Recycling for about four years. 

The original MRF in Ann Arbor, which formerly was operated by Charlotte, North Carolina-based ReCommunity, which Republic Services acquired in 2017, fell into disrepair. It was closed in 2016 because of safety concerns stemming from the status of the equipment. Instead, the site was operated as a transfer station between the community and the processing facility.

The updated facility was funded in part by an $800,000 grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE). In addition to the grant, RAA raised $5.1 million in private funds from Level One Bank, Farmington Hills, Michigan, and $800,000 from New York-based Closed Loop Partners, to finance the project.

RAA partnered with Machinex, based in Plessisville, Quebec, to design its new processing system. RAA chose Machinex because Ukena had worked with the company on four other facilities and knew Machinex had experience with MRF retrofits. Work on the MRF took about a year to complete, and it officially opened Dec. 1, 2021.

The 55,000-square-foot MRF has about 30 employees and recovers mixed-color high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles, natural HDPE bottles, aluminum cans, steel cans, mixed paper, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, old corrugated containers (OCC) and glass. Ukena says the MRF is designed to be a regional hub that can process 34,000 tons annually in one shift. 

The MRF primarily serves the city of Ann Arbor under a 10-year contract. However, it also processes materials from Ypsilanti, Michigan, and the surrounding area. These cities previously shipped recyclables out of state for sorting or cut back on their municipal recycling programs.

RAA’s MRF receives approximately 24,000 tons per month, and 91 percent gets recycled, Ukena says.

End-to-end sustainability

Ukena says the driving force behind the MRF is its goal of zero-waste output at every stage of processing. Its physical redesign and operating strategy are driven by a zero-waste ethic to rebuild a credible, transparent recycling system.

“We call it a zero-waste MRF as opposed to just a traditional integrated waste management [facility],” Ukena says. “An integrated waste management MRF is just one that tries to process as much material as it can. Production and revenues are key [in those facilities].” 

Ukena says the MRF prioritizes mitigating climate change, protecting the health of its workers and preserving valuable resources alongside maintaining long-term financial viability. This means RAA considers how the material is collected, how it’s processed and how to capture as much of the residual materials for reuse as possible. 

The organization’s zero-waste principles began in the design process when RAA required Machinex to build around an existing two-ram baler from Cordele, Georgia-based Harris and a glass-breaker screen from CP Group of San Diego that it wanted to reuse. The line is designed to have double the sorting capabilities, so end products are of the best quality, Ukena says. 

“We want to take the material to its highest value and best use,” he adds. “We want to make sure it has the chance for it to get recycled again and again.”

The material is dumped on the southeast side of the MRF and loaded into a surge hopper and metering drum. It then goes to a presort house to remove hazardous items, such as lithium-ion batteries, as well as plastic film and small appliances. Ukena says the sorting house has climate control and air filtration, so the sorters aren’t subjected to harsh conditions while working.

Next, the material encounters an OCC screen, which removes large pieces of cardboard, and the glass breaker. Once the glass has been removed, the remaining material is fed into two ballistic separators that separate two-dimensional paper from the three-dimensional containers.

The container stream then passes beneath an overhead magnet to capture ferrous metals and an eddy current that recovers aluminum. The container stream then encounters an optical sorter, which was provided by Machinex. Ukena says the sorter sits midstream and positively sorts PET. The sorter makes up to 85 picks per minute and handles about 20 tons per hour.

In the last stretch of sorting, the recovered PET goes through two quality control lines where workers remove any residuals that might have gotten through. The sorted materials are placed into one of five bunkers that feed an in-ground conveyor that takes the material to the two-ram baler.

Ukena says RAA periodically opens 100 to 200 PET and paper bales per month to ensure they are of the highest quality possible.

RAA takes a community-based approach to the end markets it sells the recovered recyclables to. The organization says it works to keep the materials as local as possible, which helps fund jobs and keeps money in the community.

“We try to tighten our footprint as much as we can about where we go with stuff,” Ukena says. “We don’t send it overseas. For example, our paper markets are 180 miles away in Wapakoneta, Ohio, where there is a tree-free mill that only uses recycled content.”

One of the ways the organization chooses its consuming customers is based on how each facility supports its workers and local community. RAA also takes into consideration how a facility manages material.

“We can’t always [sell to consumers that support our communities],” Ukena says. “This is a business, you know. But we take it very seriously when people place their recyclables at the curb. That’s an agreement we make with our community that we’re going to try to do the right thing with those materials and not throw them away or not use them as aggregate in landfills.”

Room to grow

Ukena says RAA plans to increase the MRF’s efficiency moving forward. At the end of last year, EGLE awarded the organization a $200,000 grant to begin sorting No. 5 plastic, or polypropylene (PP).

RAA is applying the money toward the installation of a Machinex SamurAI robot on the container line at the end of October. The robot will be fitted with a camera that will assist it in identifying items to positively sort. The robot will prioritize PP first, then it will focus on picking HDPE natural and HDPE colored. Ukena says the robot will make about 60 picks per minute.

RAA also could get another optical sorter, however, Ukena says that will depend on whether the volume of incoming plastic containers increases and if it’s financially viable.

Additionally, Ukena says RAA has plans to install three more robots at the MRF over the next few years. While it’s unclear which company will supply the robots, RAA is considering using them for quality control for aluminum cans, or UBCs, and PET bottles. The organization also is considering placing one on the container residue line to ensure no plastic was missed previously in the sorting process.

Ukena says he hopes the work RAA has done at the facility can serve as a blueprint for other companies considering the same approach.

“Recycling needs to be authentic to reap all the potential benefits it can bring,” Ukena said when the MRF opening in late 2021. “In addition to creating much-needed recycling capacity to southeast Michigan, we want our zero-waste MRF to be a model for anchoring effective recycling programs and systems.”

The author is digital editor for the Recycling Today Media Group and can be contacted at akamczyc@gie.net. This is an updated version of an article that first appeared on www.RecyclingToday.com.