Victoria Pendergrass and Lillian Wheelis, Staff Writers

Buy, use, place in recycle bin. Take bin to street, Bring bin back from the street. Repeat. But what happens after the recycling leaves your home?

Your recycling heads to the recycling plant, known to workers as the Material Recovery Facility (MRF). Fifteen workers and their boss, Rusty Miller, maintain everything that goes in and out of the doors on a daily basis.

“If you participate in the ‘green bin program,’ the bins come here. Our facility is 15 years old, and we have recycled 150,000 tons of material,” Miller says.

The MRF takes a wide range of materials, including glass, aluminum and steel containers. Plastic bottles, jugs and containers are also collected. All paper products — from cardboard to newspaper to junk mail — are accepted and there are separate processes for all the materials.

“All of our cans and metals go onto a belt — this is the pre-sort station. The guys manually separate the materials there,” Miller says. “An overhead magnet then pulls up the aluminum cans.”

A shaker screen is predominantly used to separate dirt and other contaminants from the recyclables. A machine called the trommel rotates material at an angle, and sends the small stuff into their sections.

“We have an air classifier, which is a huge fan, [that] blows away the milk jugs and cans,” Miller says. “The glass bottles drop and are manually sorted into piles of green, clear and brown glass.”

Paper is a whole different ballgame.

“Newspaper is put into a pulper, where it is beat and destroyed until it reaches the consistency of mashed potatoes,” Miller says. “Then it is dried and pressed and made into newspaper again.”

Paper can be reused up to seven times. Each time paper is recycled, its fibers become shorter and shorter, until they reach a non-reusable status.

Plastic bottles are also a huge part of the industry. The facility recycles 20 tons of bottles every month.

“We usually tell people if the neck of their bottle is smaller than the rest of the bottle, it should be recycled,” Miller says.

Miller, along with recycling educator Barbara Meier have their own theories and pieces of advice on recycling.

“Age doesn’t matter when it comes to recycling, but it is easier to start good recycling habits early,” Miller says. “For teens, when it comes to shopping, I’d say create good purchasing habits from the start. Buy products that are made from recyclables, or that can be recycled in the future.”

Meier focuses more on the cost efficiency of recycling.

“Utility fees for each house cover the costs of our recycling plant, which means people are paying to recycle whether they do or not,” Meier says. “I think everyone should take advantage of this opportunity, and get their money’s worth.”