Taking on More

The city of Columbus, Ohio, will begin offering residential recycling service to its residents in June of this year. The city will partner with the Curbside Value Partnership (CVP), Arlington, Va., on educational and tracking programs in conjunction with the launch of the program.

The addition of residential recycling should be a boon to Rumpke Recycling’s Columbus material recovery facility (MRF). The company’s Columbus MRF will process recyclables collected from city residents. According to Jonathan Kissell, corporate communications supervisor for Rumpke, the MRF will see an additional 50,000 tons of recyclables per year when the residential recycling program is fully implemented in 2013.
 

New Program, New Opportunities
In a press release issued by the CVP in January, Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, states: “A residential recycling program is overdue in Columbus. Our recycling program is about preserving the environment, making Columbus greener and saving on tipping fees paid at the landfill.”

Beginning this spring in a series of five phases that will conclude in early 2013, 64-gallon carts will be delivered to the 227,000 residents living in single-family homes and structures with four or fewer units that are not part of an apartment complex within the city limits.

The recycling carts will contain information on the lid about what can and cannot be recycled, and an attached packet will offer further information about the program, collection days and other details.

CVP, the city of Columbus and the Columbus-based firm MurphyEpson Public Relations will work together to create, roll out and measure an education campaign to supplement the new residential recycling program, according to the CVP.

While the city, the CVP and MurphyEpson will focus efforts on education, Rumpke Recycling, which operates a subscription-based service in Columbus, will collect the recyclables and process the material at its Columbus MRF.

Kissell says the new program should not be referred to as curbside recycling, as not all collection will take place at the curb. “Many Columbus residents will receive recycling collection in alleys behind their houses,” he says. “The point of collection for recycling will be the same location as the collection point for the resident’s trash.”

Prior to the new program, Columbus residents had access to recycling via drop-off boxes placed by the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio or by subscribing directly to Rumpke for a fee.

The change to the city’s recycling program is expected to positively affect operations at Rumpke’s Columbus MRF, which was recently updated last year with a new processing system from Machinex, based in Plessisville, Quebec.
 

System Upgrade
Cincinnati-based Rumpke Recycling says it seeks to balance the needs of the residents it serves as well as those of its consuming customers.

“Residents continually ask to recycle more items,” Kissell says. “The renovated system allows Rumpke to now accept cartons (e.g., gable tops and aseptic) thanks to an optical scanner designed to separate these items.”

At the same time, he says MRF operators are under more scrutiny to provide recyclables with minimal contamination. “We needed to install technology and sorting equipment to meet this critical demand,” he says of Rumpke Recycling’s Columbus MRF.

Steve Sargent, corporate director of recycling at Rumpke, says flexibility is built into the processing system at the Columbus MRF, giving Rumpke Recycling the ability to respond to the needs of its consuming customers.

In addition to material from Columbus, the regional processing facility handles material from the nearby Ohio cities of Chillicothe, Circleville, Ironton, Mansfield and Mt. Vernon. Because the MRF was designed as a regional processing facility, Kissell says it will be able to handle the expected increase in recyclables recovered through Columbus’ new residential recycling program.

“The city of Columbus has been researching a citywide recycling program for many years, and we are excited that it’s a reality,” he adds.

Rumpke Recycling started upgrading its Columbus MRF in 2009. “The newly renovated MRF was up and running in August 2011,” he says. “We continue making improvements every day.”

Kissell adds, “Rumpke’s enhanced recycling facility in Columbus provides the necessary infrastructure to accommodate the volume from the city.”

Rumpke’s Columbus MRF consists of two phases: Phase 1 involves pre-processing and the removal of cardboard from the incoming material stream, while Phase 2 uses a highly automated processing system to perform the sorting and separation.

Van Dyk Baler Corp., Stamford, Conn., supplied the equipment for Phase 1, while Phase 2 features the newly updated 30-ton-per-hour sorting system from Machinex, which offers twice the capacity of Rumpke’s previous system, according to the company.

At the time of the upgrade, about one-third of the material Rumpke handled at its Columbus MRF came from drop-off programs, a primary consideration in the upgrade. “Traditionally, drop-off boxes contain a lot of items that are not acceptable for recycling,” Kissell says. These items can include anything from large quantities of plastic bags to furniture, he adds. “We also tend to see more car parts, clothing, bed sheets and scrap metal.”
 

Positive Impact
Rumpke expects to see cleaner material arrive through the new residential recycling program than from current drop-off programs. “Rumpke drivers are trained about acceptable items for recycling and will review material at the point of collection,” Kissell says. He also says that the sheer size of a 64-gallon recycling cart will prevent dumping of large items.

Rumpke expects the city’s new residential recycling program to affect its Columbus MRF in a number of ways.

“We will add or retain 60 jobs as a direct result of the city’s program,” Kissell says. “We will also continue operating a second shift at the MRF to accommodate the volume from the city.”

He adds, “Rumpke is also adding 12 to 15 trucks to its Columbus fleet.”

Recyclables will be collected every other week, Kissell says. The company will shift tonnage from other area locations it operates to ensure continuous operation of its Columbus MRF, he adds.
 

Going with the Flow
Rumpke Recycling’s Columbus MRF can process 500 to 800 tons of recyclables per day, the company says, 51 percent of which is newspaper and mixed paper. Of the other recyclables recovered, 23 percent is mixed glass, 6 percent is OCC (old corrugated containers), 4 percent is PET (polyethylene terephthalate), 3 percent is HDPE (high-density polyethylene), 3 percent is steel cans and 2 percent is aluminum cans.

Rumpke Recycling’s Columbus MRF includes a bag breaker and air recovery system for plastic bags. “The breaker rips the bags open to release the recyclables inside,” Kissell says. “Then, the air recovery system sucks the bags out of the mix.” While Rumpke’s sorting system cannot process plastic bags, he says the bag breaker and air recovery system help to manage this material.

Large pieces of OCC also are common at the drop-off locations, prompting Rumpke to install a triple deck screen system to recover this material.

The single-stream sorting system can process 60,000 pounds of material per hour, double its pre-renovation rate, according to Rumpke. Five optical scanners combine with eddy currents, traditional overhead magnets, disc screens and more than 2,530 feet of conveyor belts to separate the incoming material.

The system includes a flat fraction separator, which features industrial-strength fans spinning in reverse that attract small fragments of paper, while containers remain on the conveyor below.

The MRF also includes a comprehensive mixed glass cleanup system, which uses air and mechanical separation to remove contaminants and prepare glass for use as a raw material by the container and fiberglass insulation industries.

The renovation of Rumpke’s Columbus MRF has enabled the company to expand its single-stream recycling services to other communities in the area. “Rumpke’s Mt. Vernon recycling facility, located an hour from Columbus, now operates a single-stream compaction system, and recyclables are transported to Columbus for processing,” Kissell says. “We have similar setups throughout Ohio in Mansfield, Circleville, Chillicothe, Wellston and Ironton. We also recently launched a new single-stream drop-off program in Huntington, W.Va., and the materials are transported to the Columbus MRF.”

He continues, “We continually review the efficiency of the MRF operation. We are consistently processing 30 to 35 tons per hour and we have seen the system run at 40 tons per hour. This allows us to grow single-stream programs throughout the Midwest.”

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at dtoto@gie.net.