With the new “single-stream” method, citizens don’t have to separate their discards. New machinery sorts the materials for sale to a growing market.
By Tom Avril
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
In the beginning, you had to separate everything. Newspaper from cereal boxes, brown glass from clear, tin cans from plastic – if it was even collected.
Then came “dual stream,” where you just had to separate paper from everything else.
And now, the final frontier: Toss it all in the same bin.
That is the premise behind “single-stream” recycling, a practice that began in the western United States and is moving slowly eastward, with the latest trial now under way in parts of Philadelphia.
The idea is to make recycling easier, both for the people who put stuff out on the curb and for the haulers who pick it up. The goal is to make money.
It’s a long way from the early days of recycling, when the talk was all about saving the Earth.
These days the field is marked by investment in high-tech, multimillion-dollar equipment that automatically sorts a chaotic pile of consumer leftovers into “commodities.” The tidy bales of paper, cans and plastic are in high demand both here and abroad, especially in booming China.
One facility in Philadelphia, Blue Mountain Recycling, has what experts say is some of the most state-of-the-art separating equipment available.
Residents of Springfield Township, in Montgomery County, started putting all their recyclables in one bin last year. Chestnut Hill went single-stream last month, and West Oak Lane is to follow soon. Several Center City office buildings have done so as well.
Not everyone is convinced that this kind of recycling is the answer. In less populated areas, there often isn’t enough material to justify installing expensive separation equipment.
And some paper companies have complained that paper, once separated from other materials, contains bits of broken glass that can damage their machines.
But the latest separating machines have cut way back on that problem. Now, a few paper companies have bought the equipment themselves.
Brian Boerner, head of recycling in Fort Worth, Texas, said the program sometimes lost money in the past. Since going single-stream in 2003, the city has more than doubled its recycling rate and now makes $1 million a year.
“Other than the feel-good factor, there wasn’t any monetary bonus to do recycling,” Boerner said. “Now there’s a real big one.”
At Blue Mountain Recycling in Southwest Philadelphia, cans, bottles, cardboard and paper come tumbling down a giant conveyor belt.
Then, as if a giant hand were reaching into the mix, a series of machines pluck out the different materials one at a time.
First comes cardboard, propelled to one side by rotating, star-shaped disks. The disks are spaced in such a way that only large, flat objects are removed.
Then comes white paper.
That is removed by the “V-screen,” a giant, V-shaped contraption that cost more than $500,000, made by California-based CP Manufacturing Inc.
All the materials come tumbling downhill through the machine. But paper doesn’t get through, because spinning disks send it up the “V,” helped along by an air current.
After that, still more ingenious devices separate tin cans, plastic and aluminum. Broken glass is sifted out through small holes and ground up for paving filler.
Recycling experts who have visited Blue Mountain are impressed. Among them is Kate Krebs, executive director of the National Recycling Coalition, a nonprofit that represents businesses, governments and environmental groups.
Her reaction: “Wow.”
Blue Mountain owners David DiIenno and Herb Northrop, who process 12,000 tons a month here and at a sister facility in Montgomeryville, aren’t done yet. For now, they need workers to separate different kinds of plastic by hand.
By the end of the year, they intend to install infrared scanners that can tell a milk jug from a clear-plastic water bottle. The conveyor belt could then move four times as fast.
DiIenno said he’ll keep his 88 workers, because the company will grow.
The two owners, who met while working at national trash-handling company, started Blue Mountain five years ago on a shoestring.
They maxed out credit cards and borrowed money to buy their first piece of equipment, starting in a warehouse with three walls and no running water.
“We ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” DiIenno recalled.
Today, they have a long-term contract to supply paper to Kimberly-Clark, one of the largest paper companies in the world.
The question now is whether Philadelphia will save money.
The city spends about $120 a ton to get rid of trash, including labor costs and landfill fees. Recycling, which is required by law, generally costs well above $140 per ton, in part because of the city’s low recycling rates.
But the equation could change fast, said city recycling coordinator David Robinson.
Early results from the single-stream program in Chestnut Hill show that recycling rates have more than doubled, aided in part by a separate reward program that gives people $5 in coupons for every 10 pounds of materials collected.
And landfill fees are expected to rise by about $10 a ton in the coming year, while the market for recycled materials is getting hotter all the time, fueled largely by China.
The combination of growing costs for trash, higher prices for recyclables, and more of it may make the numbers work.
The No. 1 U.S. export these days, as measured by volume, is scrap paper, according to the American Forest and Paper Association and PIERS Maritime Research Services, a data and consulting firm.
The equation already works in Springfield Township, says Mike Taylor, assistant township manager. Previously, two trucks with two workers each picked up recyclables each week from 6,900 households. One truck was for paper, and one for everything else.
Now Springfield needs just one truck with three workers.
Some residents were skeptical at first, but now say they like throwing everything into one bin.
“I was a little bit confused as to how they were going to separate it,” said Catriona Trueman. “This is a definite improvement.”
Paper companies are changing their minds, too, largely because they need the material to feed their mills. But they still grumble about broken glass.
“It wears your equipment down to nothing,” says Tom Hahn, who buys recycled paper for SP Newsprint, a partnership of three newspaper companies, including Knight Ridder, the parent company of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., which publishes The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.
Still, paper companies and advocates alike agree that single-stream is here to stay.
Several hundred communities nationwide have made the switch, said Eileen Berenyi, president of Governmental Advisory Associates, an industry research firm.
The bottom line is money, says David Biddle, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Commercial Recycling Council.
“This may well be the point where we can really get a foothold on doing this right,” Biddle said. “It has nothing to do with environmentalists. It has everything to do with business.”
Contact staff writer Tom Avril at 215-854-2430 or [email protected].
The National Recycling Partnership (NRP) is a coalition committed to improving recycling programs in the United States and reinvigorating recycling among consumers. Under the direction of the National Recycling Coalition (NRC), grocery, food and beverage producers and retailers are engaged in two major initiatives to maximize the potential of recycling programs nationwide.