Picture Show: Waste Management

Recycling is nothing new, but few among us have seen what happens to our plastic, paper, metal, and glass once it departs from our blue, curbside bins. Today, however, the photographer Mathieu Young takes us on an enlightening tour of the Waste Management Materials Recovery Facility in Pico Rivera, California. It’s a recycling facility that sorts nearly 6,000 tons of material per month, and it’s quite a load to take in.

In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 90,000 pounds of trash. Currently, only about 10 percent of that gets recycled.

The Waste Management Pico Rivera MRF is a privately owned and operated 39,000 square foot recycling facility that sorts 5,800 tons of material per month.

On average, 225 tons are processed per day.

Single-stream recycling, which allows customers to commingle recyclable paper and mixed containers in one bin for collection, has greatly increased participation and household recovery. When the material arrives, it needs to sorted.

The plant employs 30 sorters.

Mario Zavala is the operations manager at Pico Rivera MRF.

Americans make nearly 400 billion photocopies a year, or about 750,000 copies every minute of every day.

We also throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

This facility is about 50 percent mechanized and 50 percent by hand. Some newer facilities have employed high-tech mechanized optical sorters that reduce the amount of man power needed.

Where the materials are sent to be reprocessed depends on current commodity prices.

Workers wear special gloves to protect themselves from broken glass and syringes.

Currently, fewer than one third of glass bottles sold in the United States are recycled.

Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

Since becoming single stream, the volume of materials at this facility has more than tripled.

An employee responsible for quality control hand checks each bail.

Recycling plastics is not an endless loop. Most plastics will be turned into secondary materials which are no longer recyclable, and typically take between 450 and 1,000 years to biodegrade in a landfill.

If it doesn’t make it into the recycle bin, it goes to the landfill and becomes part of the 251 millions tons of household waste created by Americans every year.

Of course, while recycling is important, a better way to reduce our footprint is to simply create less waste.