Background
As part of its municipal waste management system the City, through its Public Works Department (PWD), operates a material recovery facility (MRF). The MRF, which began operations in 2000, is located within the premises of the PWD and receives recyclable items from residential areas, schools and businesses. Accepted items include paper, cardboard, aluminum cans, tin, glass, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics (code #1) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics (code #2). The materials recovered by the plant are sold to companies that turn them into new bottles and packaging products. The MRF also offers services for paper shredding and electronic waste recycling, as well as sells compost and mulch produced by the PWD.
Current operations at the MRF face processing capacity constraints, including manual sorting. The MRF has the capacity to process approximately 4 tons/hour with a recycling rate of 67%, while the remaining 33%, which results from a combination of non-recoverable materials and manual processing challenges, is sent to the landfill. The City sees an opportunity to handle more materials and increase efficiency through expansion and new automated equipment.
Project Scope
The project consists of expanding and upgrading the processing capacity of the MRF through the installation of automated equipment, including:
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Metering bin with bag breaker to help maintain a more consistent material flow on the sorting line and remove more material from bags;
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Cardboard screen to capture cardboard before entering the manual sorting line;
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Second compactor to create a dual compactor system to reduce the downtime associated with swapping full compactors;
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Magnetic separator for ferrous materials (tin cans);
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Eddy current separator for aluminum;
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Ballistic separator to separate 2D (flat) waste, such as paper, cardboard and film plastics from 3D waste, such as bottles, cans and other materials that roll or bounce; and
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Optical sorter which uses high-resolution optical sensors, often combined with near-infrared spectroscopy, to analyze and automatically separate PET and polypropylene (PP) based on their reflectance properties.
To facilitate expansion of the MRF, the City secured two pieces of land. In April 2025, a five-acre lot adjacent to PWD was purchased to store equipment and vehicles outside its current premises. In May 2025, the City purchased a nearby 2.5-acre lot with a cardboard baling facility. The MRF plans to expand its compacting capacity with this existing infrastructure, as well as use the lot for the temporary storage of other materials.
Benefits
The project is expected to increase the average processing capacity of the facility from 4 to 10 tons/hour and its recycling rate from 67% to 95%, thus reducing the amount of material sent to the landfill. The upgraded MRF will continue to process current recyclables, as well as incorporate additional materials, such as plastic #5 (polypropylene), which is not widely recycled in the United States. Additionally, the project will allow the MRF to help surrounding communities expand their recycling programs, thus increasing the population served within a wider region.
