With material buyers today paying less for recyclables but demanding higher quality, some recycling companies have cut back or closed.
Peoria Disposal Company (PDC), however, has rolled with the punches – and hit back with a multi-million-dollar upgrade to its Pekin, Ill. materials recovery facility.
The city of Winnipeg’s inbound contamination rate averaged 14.5% over the first two months of 2020, according to GFL Environmental.
As of last October, the Canadian city of Winnipeg has been sending its household recyclables to a technology-heavy MRF that uses seven optical sorters and a robot.
Republic Services believes a different sorting approach can bring about positive change.
It may have low-tech lines and buildings going back four decades, but the dual-stream MRF in Berkeley, Calif. produces clean material that meets the demands of buyers today.
When it first opened more than a decade ago, the Durham Region Material Recovery Facility (MRF) in Ontario was Canada’s first dual-stream facility to use an optical sorter.
GreenWaste Recovery, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, has been known in the industry for its use of advanced technologies to recover materials. That company characteristic was recently bolstered by GreenWaste’s move to bring on another innovation: automated sorters with artificial intelligence.