The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Info campaign, recycling audits coming
Lorainites will get a reminder this spring on the best ways to recycle paper, plastics and cardboard.
Waste hauler Republic Services plans an information campaign in the city to help residents differentiate the good, the bad and the ugly of local recycling efforts.
Not every piece of paper, plastic, metal or glass fits into Republic Services’ program for recycling, said Dan Schoewe, operations manager for the company’s recycling center, 43650 OberlinElyria Road in New Russia Township outside Oberlin.
“A lot of things are recyclable that are not in our program, and we don’t want,” Schoewe said.
“It’s going to be a contaminant to us,” Schoewe said. “So, we always say, know what to throw, and by that we mean, know what’s in your program.”
The center is running a contamination rate of 30 percent.
Republic Services hopes to improve, said Schoewe and Recycling Coordinator Lisa Beursken.
Audits coming
Beursken and Brandi Schnell, community outreach coordinator for the Lorain County Solid Waste Management District, spoke about recycling as part of Lorain City Council’s meeting March 15.
“We’re noticing high levels of contamination and we just want to address it with some education and awareness,” Beursken said.
Lorain is not the only community where the audits happen, she said.
This spring, some Lorain residents will see mailed notices coming from the Lorain County Solid Waste District.
Republic Services staff then will do visual audits, peering into the wheeled recycling bins at curbside.
Those taking care will get a thank-you card attached to the container, while those with contaminants will get an “Oops!” tag.
The process helps Republic Services, but has potential to affect the city, said Rick Soto, chief of staff to Lorain Mayor Jack Bradley.
There is a chance the city could lose recycling grant money that pays for awareness efforts and public improvements, Soto said.
Know what to throw
For residents, the recycling process can be confusing, Schoewe and Schnell said.
People want to recycle, but practices and guidelines change over time, so people sometimes don’t know what to do for specific
items, Schnell said.
An example: Cardboard is recyclable, but pizza boxes are not because they are contaminated with grease, she said.
The No. 1 cause of recycling contamination is plastic shopping bags, often called blue plastic shopping bags for the common color, Schoewe said.
The bags have a recycling symbol printed on them.
Consumers can return them to stores such as Walmart that offer bins for the bags, but the bags should not go in Republic Services’ containers, Schoewe said.
“We don’t do that here, that’s technically a contaminant for us, and it’s something that’s in our program,” he said. “Again,
knowing what to throw.”
In the center
The Republic Services’ recycling center formally is called a material recovery facility.
It is on the same 1,600acre site as the Lorain County Landfill, also operated by the waste hauling company.
It opened in 1992, and in 2013, had a $14.9 million overhaul, adding $9 million in equipment.
It has managers and equipment operators from Republic Services and about 50 staff from contractor Lead Point.
Their job is to sort through recyclable materials on a large scale — up to 400 tons, or 800,000 pounds, every day, and contamination adds up.
“Again, remember, 30 percent of that we have to throw out,” Schoewe said.
The items come from the region spanning from Toledo
to the Cleveland area.
That includes Lorain city and Lorain County communities where Republic Services is the waste hauler.
Clogging the system
Inside the center, the employees work alongside a multi-story network of conveyor belts, rollers, shakers, chutes, magnets, lights, sensors and air jets that separate cardboard, paper, plastics and metals.
Like materials end up in silos for bundling into bales that eventually are trucked out and sold for reuse.
The process is a “negative” sorting line, meaning when something comes through that should not be there, the machines and workers must pull it out.
“The higher the contamination level, the slower we have to run, or the more contaminated our end product is,” Schoewe said. “So, we’re trying to get the message out there to people, again, know what to throw, know what’s in our program.”
The contaminants can cause major clogs in the system.
Plastic bags, plastic sheets and VHS video tape can wrap around the sorting equipment.
Garden hoses are worse — and the center can get 40 a day.
At times the machines shut down for workers to climb in and cut out the snags. Schoewe and Beursken described a discarded lawnmower blade that broke a conveyor belt.
“We see a lot of different things out here,” Schoewe said.
When residents don’t know if items are recyclable, they may toss items in
recycling bins thinking the sorters will figure it out.
That “wishful recycling” hurts more than it helps, Schoewe said.