Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority

1. After sorted recyclable materials are picked up by your waste hauler, they are brought by truck to the recycling center.
2. As trucks loaded with recyclables arrive, they are weighed at a scale house in front of the facility to determine the weight and volume of materials. The trucks then enter the recycling center and drive onto what’s known as the tipping floor, where they unload their cargo. The tipping floor is divided into three main sections: the paper group, the container group and corrugated cardboard.
3. The recyclables are then loaded into a hopper, which places them on either a blue (paper) or red (containers) conveyor belt that will carry them to the second-floor sorting area.
4. On the tipping floor, gross contaminants are removed and the remaining material is then conveyed for mechanical and manual separation.

In the second-floor sorting area, employees (sorters) on each side of the paper conveyor belt select different materials—corrugated cardboard, magazines, or junk mail—and drop them into chutes leading to storage bunkers on the first floor. Sorters pick out contaminants that cannot be recycled.

The paper recyclables then go through a negative pick, which means that contaminants and most other recyclable items are removed from the conveyor belt, leaving one material at the end of the line.

That one material is usually newsprint because it is the recyclable received in the largest quantity from households. This remaining material drops off the end of the conveyor, down a chute to another conveyor that carries it to one of two balers that prepare material for shipment to market.

On a regular basis, a loader removes the other paper recyclables from their storage bunkers and places them on the conveyor, which carries them to the baler.

5. When the container line reaches the second floor, a large magnetic conveyor belt picks off the ferrous metal cans and lids and drops them into a first-floor storage bunker. The remaining containers pass over a vibrating screen that filters out small pieces of glass, dirt and other contaminants.
6. Next, an air classifier separates lighter plastics and aluminum from the heavier glass containers. In the sorting area, plastic containers and aluminum are hand-sorted and dropped into first-floor storage bunkers. All containers are baled, except glass.

   Most of the plastic received by the recycling center is high-density polyethylene (HDPE, Code #2). It is sorted into two categories, natural and colored, to increase its value. For example, milk jugs are made of natural HDPE while laundry detergent bottles are colored HDPE.

7. Glass containers are sorted by color: clear, amber, and green. Once sorted, they then travel by conveyor outside of the building where they are mechanically crushed and dropped into roll-off containers, ready for transport to market.
8. Our recyclables are shipped to various markets throughout the northeast, Canada and Asia to be turned into new products made of recyclable materials.