Rumpke opens largest MRF in North America

During the planning process for the Rumpke Recycling & Resource Center, a $100 million facility now open in Columbus, Ohio, Rumpke Senior Vice President of Recycling & Sustainability Jeff Snyder and his team visited material recovery facilities (MRFs) across the country, researching innovation and technological advancements in the industry.

Now open in Columbus, the Rumpke Recycling & Resource Center is the largest and most technologically advanced recycling facility in North America, the company says, with the ability to process up to 250,000 tons of recycling materials per year from more than 50 Ohio counties.

“This will be the model for future MRFs,” Snyder says.

Cincinnati-based Rumpke Waste & Recycling first expanded to Columbus in 1991 and since 2011 has operated a MRF capable of recycling 160,000 tons per year. The new recycling center was designed to have the capacity to accommodate growth in and around Columbus, one of the fastest-growing metropolitan regions in the country, which is expected to grow to 3 million residents in the next 20 years.

“What this region needed was more capacity to capture that growth,” Rumpke Waste & Recycling President Andrew Rumpke says. “We have this capacity that is going to be able to capture the growth in Columbus while also allowing us to continue to drive more recycled material into the circular economy.”

Custom-built for Rumpke’s desired equipment layout, the 226,000-square-foot facility is outfitted with a line custom-designed by Machinex, featuring four ballistic separators, 19 optical scanners and 10 artificial intelligence (AI) technology units. Using AI technology, the company's optical sorters can separate aluminum foil from used beverage cans (UBCs), segregate colored bottles and thermoformed plastic containers from clear polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and more, Snyder says.

Throughout the facility, nine vacuums suck plastic bags off the line at transition points along the conveyor belt. The facility also has been outfitted with two ceiling-mounted cranes that can be used for maintenance on or to reconfigure equipment and a hydraulic lift “tipper” that can unload 50-foot trailers of material.

At processing speeds of 60 tons per hour, the facility is expected to process 150,000 to 250,000 tons annually from 50 Ohio counties, with an expected recovery rate of 98 percent. The center employs 60, including 28 sorters and a full-time education staff.

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With its Columbus Recyling & Resource Center, Rumpke also is rethinking how it interacts with the community and builds trust with the public.

The facility boasts a number of public spaces and educational areas, including an education center with interactive exhibits developed in cooperation with COSI (Center of Science and Industry) and a research center designed in collaboration with The Ohio State University.

“We’re welcoming in communities, municipalities, schools, neighbors,” Snyder says.

Rumpke supplies recovered materials to manufacturers within a 250-mile radius of the facility, with 80 percent of materials going to companies with operations in Ohio, including Eastman, Pratt and Owens-Illinois. In terms of commodities, Rumpke says, end products will be consistent with what was coming out of the company’s original Columbus MRF.

“This facility is about scale. It’s scaling up to meet the demands of the growing Columbus area,” Andrew Rumpke says. “And we’re always looking at and researching what’s the next material type that we [can recover].”

To increase local sustainability efforts and create transparency, customers can use the recycling center’s Sample Station, equipped with a separate tipping floor. Sampling capabilities will provide a real-time recycling audit to help customers measure their recycling program’s success or identify necessary adjustments.

Rumpke Waste & Recycling is one of the nation’s largest privately owned residential and commercial waste and recycling firms, providing service to areas of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and West Virginia. The company operates landfills, transfer stations and 15 recycling facilities, including material recovery facilities in Cincinnati and Columbus, as well as a glass processing facility in Dayton, Ohio.