The Association of Plastic Recyclers is encouraging members of the public who have questions about what really happens to their recycling to book a MRF tour instead of putting trackers in curbside materials.
In an episode of APR’s Recycled Content Podcast, “Correcting the Record on Plastic Recycling,” APR Chief Policy Officer Kate Bailey said that adding trackers “just doesn’t work the way people think it will work.” APR owns Resource Recycling, Inc., which publishes Plastics Recycling Update.
“It actually has the opposite effect. The sorting equipment at the MRF is highly specialized to sort materials,” Bailey said.
The effectiveness of trackers has been under debate for years, especially in the electronics recycling industry. Recently, several “tracker tests” have received mainstream media coverage, with items placed in recycling bins ending up in landfills or storage facilities, and some also ending up overseas.
An APR press release added that “it makes sense that some people might try to find out for themselves whether their local recycling programs are, in fact, working,” and while a tracker “makes for an interesting experiment,” the results are not accurate.
Bailey said that the first issue is that a tracker is “this big clunky thing that’s taped on the side.”
Material with an electronic tracker on it will likely be sorted out by optical sorters, AI or human workers, as it will be treated not only as contamination but as a threat to worker and machine safety. If attached to a lightweight material, the tracker might also make the material too heavy to be moved by air jets.
“These things also typically just fall off in the truck or in the system,” Bailey added. “In many ways it shows that the recycling system is working properly if that material gets kicked out, because it’s seeing it as a contaminant,” she added, but that’s not something the consumer necessarily understands.
If people want to know if recycling is working, Bailey suggested reaching out to a local MRF, as many are happy to do tours and explain the systems.
“Please don’t trust those tracker things, please don’t do your own tracker,” Bailey said.
“I appreciate that people are curious and they want to know,” she said, but “there’s nothing like seeing a MRF actually processing and sorting the 20, 30, 40 tons an hour of recyclables.”
APR is also hosting a virtual MRF tour with Eureka Recycling on Sept. 11, Bailey added, for those who can’t access a MRF in person.
A version of this story appeared in Plastics Recycling Update on Sept. 5.
