https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJqfWB1oZo8
WMM Facility Tour
youtube.com
In October a small group of volunteers from the Green Energy Committee and
Mothers Out front toured the facility where Lincoln’s recyclables go. The Waste
Management Material Recovery Facility (WMM) in Billerica is a former Boston
Globe building that has been repurposed.
The WMM facility takes in “single-stream” recycling and separates it into
cardboard, plastic, paper, steel, aluminum, and glass. Once separated,
materials are crushed and baled for transportation to separate, specialized
recycling facilities. Due to the high cost of transporting glass (it’s heavy),
Lincolnites separate glass from our other recyclables, as the glass is
transported directly from Lincoln to a glass recycling facility.
As we climbed up four stories of cat walks, we watched materials moving on the
conveyor belts. First, large cardboard is pulled out by handThen magnets remove
steel materials. Plastic is removed next with a vacuum, while paper is left to
fall into a lower level in the facility. Lastly, an eddy current separator
pulls out the aluminum. Each material that is separated from the stream falls
into a separate baler to be packaged for further transport.
Our tour lasted almost 4 hours and I wished I had brought my noise canceling
headphones! We couldn’t hear anyone more than two feet away. The tour lasted so
long in part because the machinery spends a large amount of time turned off as
the employees cut out items that can’t be recycled at this facility that have
gotten tangled in the machinery such as garden hoses, plastic bags, and baling
twine.
How does the system work? Lincoln pays a hauling fee to have our recycling
hauled to WMM. WMM weighs the containers before and after dumping and bills
Lincoln for the weight of stuff we send them. WMM separates the materials and
receives money for the recycled material. Right now cardboard is the most
valuable recyclable.. WMM then sends each contributing Town a portion of the
proceeds in proportion to the weight they contributed. We don’t live in a
vacuum. What we recycle matters but what the other towns do also impacts how
often the machinery is down and how much valuable material is recycled.
So what’s the take away?
Don’t bother recycling shredded paper or small scraps. It flies about like
confetti.Any paper smaller than 2”x2” will most likely get lost in the system
and end in the trash containers that reside under the conveyor belts.
Reattach caps and lids before recycling. The caps on water bottles are
recyclable but will fall through the cracks unless secured on the water bottle
before recycling.
Avoid tanglers. Plastic bags, twine, and fabric tangle in the machines and clog
up the conveyor belt. Find specialized recycling drop boxes for these
materials. When in doubt, throw it away instead.
We will have more articles to follow! Check out RecycleMA.gov
<http://recyclema.gov/>
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