Where in the World Is My Recycling?

Have you ever wondered what happens to the yogurt tub or the cardboard box after you toss it in your commingle cart and haul the cart to the curbside?

Susan Baker from Republic Services enlightened me regarding the trip the recyclables take after we wave them bye-bye:

1. You put your recyclables in curbside carts or bring them to a drop-off location.
2. The materials are picked up by the garbage service provider and brought to a baling facility located at Republic Services in Bend.
3. There, the commingled material is unloaded and baled into 1-ton bundles.
4. The bales are trucked to a Material Recovery Facility in Portland.
5. Inside the MRF, bales are broken open and loose materials are placed on a conveyor where workers and machinery sort them.
6. The sorted materials such as paper, plastic, cardboard, metals, etc. are baled.
7. All sorted bales are sold as commodity to various places: paper is shipped to a mill (for example to a newsprint mill in Oregon or Washington) and the fibers are recycled into paper, metals go to a processing facility and are recycled into new metals, plastics into new plastics/clothes/toys, and so on.

If customers follow the recycling guide, all those materials will be recycled. Trash and other material that cannot be recycled will be sent to the landfill. The more trash and unacceptable materials we throw into our recycling, the more costly the process becomes, and in the end the consumer will pay the price.

So pay attention to your recycling guide and educate your family and friends! Need help figuring out what is recycled? Check out Rethink Waste’s Recycling Resources.