When things come in that can’t be automatically sorted, removing them by hand takes a lot of work. Throughout the process, our “quality control” team pulls out anything that does not fit into the single stream categories. If something is missed, it can get caught in and/or damage our equipment.
Something like a plastic bag, a garden hose, or even just one wire hanger can get stuck and cause big issues. Every week, we dedicate an entire day just for cleaning. This includes cleaning out equipment screens to try to remove anything that’s been stuck throughout the week (see photos). Keeping the equipment clean helps our process run smoothly, but sometimes, we are forced to shut down during the work day if there is a big issue.
Besides “stringy” things that wrap around the equipment, larger, heavy chunks of materials like scrap metal or wood also cause problems. If a piece of a bicycle or wooden pallet gets jammed into the system, it can take out valuable equipment parts, shutting us down until we can remove the material, figure out what was damaged, and replace the parts to get the system working again.
A lot of work, right?
These items can also be dangerous to employees – heavy or odd-shaped items like tires or car engine exposes our team members to a chance of injury by having to pull them off the line.
Please help keep recycling running in our community and recycle only the accepted items in your bin.
Have a Recycling Question? Contact Us!