Whether by ‘wishcycling’ or willful disregard, improper recycling practices carry costs, risks [Lancaster Watchdog]

• By Dan Nephin/LNP | LancasterOnline

The Watchdog tries to do right by Mother Earth, so he recycles. 

He’d do so anyway because his kennel is in Lancaster city, where recycling is required under the Pennsylvania Municipal Waste Planning Recycling and Waste Reduction Act, commonly known as Act 101 of 1988. 

The law applies to much of Pennsylvania, though there are population-based exemptions for rural areas. Even so, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, at least 94 percent of Pennsylvanians have access to recycling.

Access, however, does not mean most Pennsylvanians are recycling correctly, and that’s what this week’s Watchdog is about. 

The Watchdog appreciates being able to put his recyclables out for curbside collection, but sometimes he’s got more corrugated cardboard than fits into his recycling bin. When that happens, he takes the cardboard to Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority’s transfer station complex on Harrisburg Pike.

And that’s how The Watchdog came to be appalled one August morning when he saw actual trash and garbage inside the large green roll-off dumpster clearly marked for recycling.

And not just a little garbage. A lot. 

“How thoughtless,” The Watchdog thought. “Someone has to go through that to separate what’s actually recyclable.”

Karen Gross, the authority’s communications manager, said, if workers on the transfer station’s tipping floor — the place where waste and recycling haulers dump their loads — see an unrecyclable item like say, a garden hose, they’d pull it out.

For some reason, Gross said, a lot of garden hoses get tossed into recycling. 

So does a lot of other stuff. 

“We are still currently seeing about 20 to 40% of trash ending up in the recycling bin,” Gross said.

And the bulk of the work to sort recyclables from trash happens at Penn Waste’s materials recovery facility in Manchester Township, York County. The Watchdog traveled there last month to better understand the process and impact of improperly recycling.

The effects are real. 

While Penn Waste’s automated machinery is heavy-duty, it’s not immune to damage. 

Brake rotors that get past the human sorters can cause damage and downtime, according to Shawn Querry, the facility’s site manager.

Lithium batteries used to power items such as power tools and electric bikes are another hazard. They should not be tossed in residential recycling or trash, according to Gross and Amanda Moley, spokesperson for Waste Connections, which bought Penn Waste in 2019. 

Moley and Querry said they believe such a battery was responsible for a March 2022 fire causing so much damage to the seven-year-old facility that the company had to spend $35 million to rebuild it.

Thankfully, Querry said, no employee was hurt in the fire. He’d like to keep it that way. 

The fire did give Penn Waste the opportunity to add more automation, which solved the manpower issues the company was having by reducing the number of sorters needed from 21 to six. 

“This is not a glorious job. Who wants to sort through trash all day long?” Querry said.

The facility and process

The Manchester facility is massive — 96,0000 square feet. That’s about two NFL football fields, minus the endzones. It has to be huge. Penn Waste serves Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, York and parts of Lebanon and Perry counties, Moley said.

Recycling trucks and tractor trailers enter the facility through one of several massive openings at one end and dump their loads on the ground. From there, a worker in a large yellow Cat vehicle called a material handler scoops the mixed material and dumps it into a metering bin. 

From there, a conveyor chute carries materials to the building’s upper level where, on the day The Watchdog visited, four sorters wearing cut-resistant gloves tried to grab and remove trash in a scene that brought to mind the classic Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory episode of “I Love Lucy,” though the material whooshing by is hardly appetizing.

As The Watchdog watched, one sorter grabbed a broken hubcap and dropped it in a trash chute. Ditto a car’s floor mat and a safety cover to a room fan. Another sorter ripped open a black trash bag to see if it contained recyclables. Seeing it did not, it too went into the trash chute. 

What can’t be recycled is sent to York County’s waste-to-energy facility. 

Among the more unusual nonrecyclable items improperly discovered by sorters over the years were a pair of bear paws, Querry said. And during hunting season, people will dump deer carcasses.

There’s no way the sorters can remove all the garbage. 

“They have a split second when they make a decision, Querry said. If trash slips by, he said, “it just goes to the screen. It can jam us up. It can break us down. It can cause a lot of issues.”

The screen Querry is referring to is another part of the materials sorting process. 

Further into the sorting process, the work gets much more automated. 

Cardboard skims across large discs on one machine and is diverted to one area while glass, cans and plastics move along. Glass is crushed and falls through a screen to its designated area. Heavier metal cans fall away from plastics on one belt and into bins. 

The plastics travel further along, where an optical sorter looks at a plastic’s light signature and color to determine its makeup. Clear water and soda bottles are made from Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, while solid-colored items such as laundry detergent bottles are made from polypropylene. 

A robotic arm using suction picks up what’s not appropriate and drops it onto another area for further processing. 

Querry said the facility’s four robotic sorters use artificial intelligence to learn and improve their abilities; each is capable of making 80 picks a minute.

Ultimately, like ends up with like and is compacted and baled to be shipped to a buyer.

Sales of recyclable materials generate a little money for LCSWMA – about $1.6 million, according to the authority’s 2022 budget. Officials make clear that they’re still spending more to facilitate recycling – hauling it and paying to have it sorted – than they’re making off these sales. Most of the authority’s revenue is derived from “tipping fees” charged to the private haulers that serve customers across the county. In LCSWMA’s case, it made $45.6 million in 2022 from tipping fees, and another $17 million from selling electricity generated at its waste-to-energy facility.

Doing your part

Moley said “wishcycling” also explains why so much trash winds up in the recycling stream. 

To explain the term, she articulated the internal dialogue of a wishcycler: “‘Well, OK, this should be recyclable.’”

“It makes them feel better to put it in the recycle bin but it has a consequence,” she added.

“One thing I found through doing education is 95% of the people want to do the right thing. They just don’t know what the right thing is. So that’s part of my job is educating people,” Moley said.

Same for Gross at LCSWMA.

Penn Waste’s York facility takes a variety of plastics, along with newspaper and chipboard — think cereal boxes. But LCSWMA stopped collecting such items in 2017, a decision largely driven by the collapse of the recycling market after China said materials from the U.S. were too contaminated.

So LCSWMA focuses on the “Big Four”: flattened corrugated cardboard, plastic bottles and jugs with necks, metal food and beverage cans, and glass jars and bottles. 

These big four items are the most marketable materials, Gross said.

Her advice to Watchdog readers: “If you’re not sure, or when in doubt, throw it out.”

What isn’t recyclable is taken to the county’s trash-to-steam plant.

For hardcore recyclers with time on their hands, Lancaster city’s Recycling Drop-off Center at 850 New Holland Ave., next to Burle Business Park, does take items LCSWMA no longer takes, including office paper, newspaper, magazines and cereal boxes. It is open to anyone, not just city residents. People must put the items into appropriate bins themselves. Be sure to check the facility’s hours before going.

Notice any problems?

Email the Lancaster Watchdog at watchdog@lnpnews.com or go to LancasterOnline.com/watchdog and tell us about it.