A Visit to a Recycling Center
Have you ever wonder what happens to the recyclables you put in your recycling bin? In April, the ReGreening Wichita group visited the Stutzman recycling center in Hutchinson, which sorts the materials from Wichita and the surrounding areas.
The sorted materials are then sold to companies which can recycle them into usable products. The center has recently been upgraded and can handle almost any materials except plastic bags, hard plastics, and Styrofoam. Each recycling center is different, so please check with your recyclables collection company to see what materials they can take. This website cannot handle the short video clips, but this was originally posted to Facebook and you may see it by following this link.
Here is the schematic of a typical recycling Center:
Note added on 06/02/2023: A recent study found that plastic bags taken to many grocery stores such as Target and Walmart to be recycled end up in landfills, and a few even ended up in foreign countries. Only about 9% of all plastic waste is recycled, 12% is incinerated, and about 79% ends up in landfills. Microparticles from plastics have been found in the bodies of about 80% of the US population. The wise thing to do is to stop using single use plastics as much as you can.
Tags: how recyclables are sorted., materials recovery facility, Single stream recycling
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