`Something you almost have to see to believe'
GFL'S new recycling facility ready to process 27 tonnes of material per hour
Robots and artificial intelligence are set to become a part of the future of recycling in Calgary, as a new high-tech facility begins operations on Friday.
GFL Environmental Inc.'s new 70,000-square-foot recycling facility, located just east of the city in Rocky View County, will process blue bin material from more than 350,000 Calgary households.
During a sneak peek of the facility during a test run on Wednesday, media got a glimpse into the technology that goes into sorting through the 27 tonnes of recyclable material that will soon pass through the building every hour.
The high-tech equipment includes everything from ballistic separators and optical sorters to AI and robots, which sift through the recyclables quickly and sort them accurately into the appropriate marketable commodities.
“We know about 18 per cent of the material we bring in is actually waste, so our job is to recover the recyclable materials — the materials that can be turned into new cardboard boxes, pop bottles, cans and various items like that,” said Brent Jespersen, GFL'S general manager for southern Alberta.
Extracting unwanted waste from the facility involves various stages of sorting, with employees working in tandem with machinery.
The process starts with the city's recycling trucks — more than 100 will arrive at the plant each week — dumping blue bin material onto what Jespersen calls the tipping floor. The material is then loaded into a drum feeder that transports it to a pre-sorting line.
Jespersen said the pre-sorters are considered the “first line of defence,” picking out items that could potentially jam the machinery.
Garden hoses are a common contaminant, but the list of naughty items caught on Wednesday included propane canisters, wooden logs and electric-powered children's toys.
“There is a lot of dangerous material that passes through this facility that we don't want coming in here,” Jespersen said.
“We have the steps in place to ensure that material is extracted, giving us a nice clean product at the end.”
After it passes through the pre-sorting station, Jespersen said material enters GFL'S ballistic separator — essentially, a machine with giant teeth on rotors that roll the recyclables forward.
The material falls through the ballistic separator onto the appropriate conveyor belt, bringing it to a different sorting station or machine.
By the time the material is filtered through the various sorting stations and machinery, it ends up at “quality control.” These employees present the final line of defence before the material is compressed into large, cube-shaped “bales” that can then be marketed to manufacturers of recycled goods across North America.
GFL'S facility will process 297 tonnes of recyclables per day, or up to 200,000 tons of material each year.
“It is something you almost have to see to believe,” Jespersen said.
“To think that this material is coming every day, every week ... it's overwhelming, but it's also exciting because we know we're treating this material properly.”
Since 2009, the city's blue bin material has been processed at a sorting facility operated by Cascade Recovery+.
Sharon Howland, the city's leader of program management for waste and recycling services, said the 15-year contract with Cascade had come to an end and that GFL was selected in 2021 to take on the city's recycling processing and marketing services.
“It's been a fantastic partnership with Cascade over 15 years, but that facility has aged,” she said. “This facility is brand new, state of the art and bigger.”
While GFL paid to build, own and operate the new facility, Howland said the contractor will charge the city a confidential processing fee.
Any revenue generated from the sale of recycled commodities comes back to the city, which Howland said is used to offset households' monthly blue bin fees — currently set at $9.16 a month.
That monthly fee covers all the program costs, including salaries for drivers, maintenance of trucks, the fuel required to run them and the processing fee paid to GFL.
“The amount of work that goes into collecting, processing and turning recyclables into something new, it's an incredible amount,” she said. “But it's worth the effort.”