The Recycling Process

To most people, recycling means placing paper, glass, metal or plastic into a container which is emptied into a large truck. What happens next is a mystery.

Casella Waste, the parent company of Westfield Disposal, uses a method called Zero-Sort recycling. This means that all forms of recycling are collected in one container and then moved to the Westfield Disposal center.

From there, the items are pushed into trailers which are then taken to the Casella’s recycling facility in Geneva, NY.

“The materials go through a machine of conveyor belts but there are also quality control people who work on that machine too, so if they see any trash that comes through the conveyor belts, it is removed,” said Renee Press, a sales representative at Casella Waste.

After the materials have been sorted, they are taken to different companies that do the actual recycling. At the Geneva recycling facility, “some materials are made into blown-in installation for homes,” Press said.

Casella’s Geneva recycling facility does not recycle plastics on location, so plastics are sent to other facilities. According to www.americanchemistry.com, recycled plastics can be made into several different products ranging from fleece jackets to carpeting.

Glass items are sent to a glass beneficiary plant where the different types of glass are sorted. “The glass actually gets sorted by laser eyes, the amber, the clear, the green and the brown, they all get sorted and different glasses go for different things,” Press said.

Like most industries, the economic downturn hit the recycling industry hard. According to Press, many companies, like Casella, actually have to pay to get rid of recycled materials.

Even though it is more expensive to recycle, reputable companies like Casella still do so. “Our company really looks toward the future and doing the right thing for the world,” Press said.

But for smaller recycling companies, it is much more difficult to keep up with the expenses of recycling. According to a former employee of Westfield Disposal who wished to stay anonymous, “Some of your smaller mom and pop recycling companies don’t recycle because it’s too expensive. They end up throwing it in with the trash.”

The recycling industry has recently seen a reduction in cost - making it much more economically feasible to recycle. But there is never a guarantee that 100 percent of the materials that you put into a recycling bin are going to be recycled.

There is always a residual rate, meaning a percentage of materials that do not actually get recycled. Each facility has a different residual rate and Casella’s rate is four percent.

A residual rate occurs most often when people recycle things that cannot be recycled, such as tempered glass or plastics that are not numbered one through seven. “These things can be recycled, but it’s a different process that we don’t have,” said the former Westfield employee.