This fall, several recycling facility operators have celebrated the opening of new and upgraded facilities or have announced significant equipment updates meant to improve both throughput and safety.

Projects meant to increase recycling capacity in Florida, upgrade sorting capacity in Pennsylvania, prevent fires in Illinois and support recycling end markets in Ohio all made headlines this fall. Catch up on the latest WM, Rumpke and Waste Connections projects below.

Know about more projects that have been recently completed or are in the works? Email us at waste.dive.editors@industrydive.com. 

WM’s Philadelphia MRF reopens after upgrades

WM has completed a $40 million automation project at its Philadelphia Recycling Facility. The upgraded facility is meant to process up to 192,000 tons of material per year. The new building was constructed on the same property as the previous MRF, but it is designed to add additional capacity for the region, said Brent Bell, WM’s vice president of recycling. 

The facility includes AI-enabled sorting technologies that help conveyors and optical sorters “to communicate with each other, and with technicians, to improve material quality,” according to a news release from the City of Philadelphia, which announced the opening and ribbon cutting last week as part of America Recycles Day. 

The tech advancements will allow WM to collect more types of plastic and add an additional optical sorter at the end of the line to identify and collect any materials that aren’t initially captured.

The project is part of WM’s long-term plan to invest $1.4 billion in new and upgraded recycling facilities across North America from 2022 to 2026. The company expects those projects to add about 2.8 million tons of incremental annual processing capacity. 

WM completes two MRF projects in Florida, with another on the way

WM completed two major MRF projects in Florida in October: a new facility in Fort Walton Beach and an upgrade in Cocoa.

WM’s $30 million recycling facility in Fort Walton Beach is a new operating location for the company. The 45,000-square-foot building has capabilities to process about 76,000 tons per year of recyclable materials, WM said in a news release.

“This new facility enables us to further our commitment to bringing sustainability-related solutions to the region by expanding access to recycling services to more communities across the Gulf Coast," said Brandon Shaw, WM Gulf Coast area vice president, in a statement.

WM also completed a $18 million automation upgrade at its WM Recycling Brevard facility in Cocoa. The upgraded facility is meant to process up to 125,000 tons of material per year. In addition to AI-enabled sorters and a last-chance optical sorter line similar to the one announced at WM’s Philadelphia facility, the Brevard location also has a glass clean-up system that uses a vacuum to separate fiber and other light debris from glass.

WM will continue its focus on boosting recycling capacity in Florida. It recently broke ground on a new $80 million recycling facility in Pembroke Pines. It also recently invested about $45 million in new C&D recycling facilities, including at WM Recycling Deerfield Beach, WM Recycling Oakes Road and WM Recycling Miami, the company said in a news release.

Rumpke celebrates recycling milestones in months after Columbus MRF opening

Rumpke Waste & Recycling says it has hit a milestone of producing its 50,000th bale in October, a few months after opening its new 226,000-square-foot MRF in Columbus, Ohio, during the summer. 

The Columbus MRF includes AI-enabled equipment and optical sorters that allow the company to collect more kinds of materials in specific Ohio markets, it said. Customers in the Columbus, Cleveland and Waverly regions may recycle clear plastic clamshell containers.

The MRF has maintained a processing capacity of 250,000 tons of material annually, which it collects from over 50 Ohio counties. It processes material at about 60 tons an hour, which has allowed the facility to collect 21 bales of aluminum cans a day, or about 737,184 cans.

The MRF is meant to boost recycling in the Columbus area and support end markets in the state. Rumpke now sends over 80% of materials to end markets in Ohio, which the company says helps support local businesses and reduce transportation costs.

Waste Connections touts fire suppression features at recent Plainfield MRF reopening

Waste Connections built extra fire safety and prevention measures into its newest MRF in Plainfield, Illinois — a move the company said was necessary after the previous Plainfield MRF caught fire in 2021 and was declared a total equipment and building loss. 

The “highly-automated” single-stream MRF, operated by subsidiary Groot Industries, includes five levels of fire safety equipment, which the companies say is more than any other MRF in the country. “We used all the latest and greatest technology we could find,” said David Kawa, district manager for Groot Industries, in a September statement.

The systems include local fire extinguisher tanks and an overhead sprinkler system as the first two levels of defense. A third level uses several Fire Rover units to monitor the plant using an artificial intelligence system, which can detect smoke, and an infrared system that can detect high levels of heat. MRF operators also added compressed air foam units in all material bunkers, an area where fires often begin, as well as a high-capacity water tank that can store over 245,000 gallons of water. 

The cost of the fire prevention systems was about 5% of the total cost to build the MRF, which is more than what would traditionally be allocated for such systems, said Tim Horkay, director of recycling operations at Waste Connections, in a statement. The company did not disclose the total project cost.

MRF operators have already used some of the systems to fight one fire since the facility started up, the company said. Employees responded to a fire in the paper bunkers by deploying the in-bunker compressed foam units, resulting in no damage to surrounding belts and controls, Kawa said in the statement. 

In the event of a fire operators are also able to redirect the flow of recyclables on sorting lines using tablets, which can help halt material or send it in another direction to isolate a fire, Kawa added. The plant’s tipping floor, processing area and bale storage warehouse are segregated with walls to prevent fires in one area from spreading to another.

The MRF runs at 37 tons per hour and uses automated equipment from Van Dyk Recycling Solutions and other equipment providers. The facility requires only four manual sorters, which further enhances safety for workers, the company said.

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