Have you ever wondered what happens to your recycling after the truck collects it?
Materials Recovery Facility
Each fortnight Thiess Services empties your 240 litre yellow lid recycling bin and delivers the material to the Somersby Materials Recovery Facility. A Materials Recovery Facility or MRF is a large factory where household recyclables are sorted into individual commodity streams, such as paper, steel and aluminium. After this process the products are mostly baled and transported to reprocessing plants.
The Somersby MRF was opened in 2008. The MRF is approximately 1.5 hectares in size, which is around the size of 2 football fields and is capable of processing 25 tonnes of recyclables, (about five truck loads) in an hour. The MRF uses a combination of manual, mechanical and automated sorting to separate recyclables into individual streams.
Check out our video of the MRF in Action!
Sorting Process
1. Delivery: The collection vehicle empties the recycling onto the receival area conveyor belt.
2. Pre Sort Station: MRF employees (called Sorters) remove large pieces of contamination (such as plastic bags, clothing, dirty nappies and food waste) by hand.
3. Disc Screens: The recyclables pass over a disc screen which has rotating discs that allow Plastic, Steel & Aluminium Containers to roll down onto a conveyor belt amd Paper & Cardboard to travel up to a different conveyor belt. Glass Bottles and Jars are broken and drop through onto another conveyor belt.
4. Auto Sort Glass: Glass is sorted into green, brown and clear via an Auto Sort Machine. The colour auto sort uses coloured filters to detect the different colours. Glass broken smaller than 10mm in size is too small to be colour sorted and is mixed together as glass fines.
5. Auto Sort Paper: The Paper and Cardboard passes through a paper auto sort machine which removes any plastics and metals that may be mixed in with this product. The Auto Sort uses near-infrared sensors and metal detectors to classify items that are not paper or cardboard and eject them out.
6. Steel Cans: Are removed using a strong magnet.
7. Aluminium Cans: A magnetic field is used to generate an electric current called an 'Eddy Current' in the aluminium. This current generates a secondary magnetic field in the aluminium that causes it to be pushed away from the other materials and separated.
8. Auto Sort Plastic: Near-infrared sensors, metal detectors and full spectrum colour sensors automatically sort the plastics into three product streams; PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) ; HDPE (High Density Polyethylene); and mixed plastics.
9. Baling: Plastics, metal and paper and cardboard are baled through a single automated baler. Sorted glass is stored in enclosed silos attached to the
outside of the main building.
10. Recycling: After recyclables have been sorted and bailed they are transported to reprocessing centres both within Australia and overseas, where they are manufactured into new goods.