Casella Stanley RHRF
OVERVIEW
RHRF Background
Casella Waste Systems operates a recycling facility in Stanley, New York. This recycling facility is part of Casella’s extensive network of RHRFs in the northeast United States, centered on waste reduction and sustainability practices. This RHRF is a single-stream facility that became operational in 2005. The materials that are accepted at this facility are: OCC, ONP, mixed paper, plastic bottles (jugs, lids), aluminum cans, steel cans, and glass bottles and jars. The RHRF employs 1 optical sorter for PET, 1 robotic sorter for PP, and 14 manual sorters. The current annual inbound volume of material is approximately 42,000 tons per year.
VIEW
Location
STEPS
Recycling Process
Once the materials arrive at the RHRF, they are dropped on the tipping floor. From there, a loader truck moves the recyclables onto the main feed belt, which then conveys the materials to the pre-sort station. In this first phase, manual sorters extract and eliminate any large contaminants and non-recyclable items such as cloth pieces, tanglers, rigid plastics, etc., as well as materials that can damage the machinery. After the pre-sort station, the materials are conveyed to an OCC screen, also known as “deck screens”. These screens are designed to segregate huge OCC pieces, which eventually glide over these rotating discs, whereas the other small items fall in order to be processed later. The OCC is moved first to the bunker and then later sent for baling. The next stage is glass removal. Remaining materials then pass through a glass breaker (2-inch minus), which crushes glass bottles and jars into smaller glass pieces. These glass fragments are sent to a landfill for beneficial use.
Remaining recyclable items, such as plastics, metals, and paper, then move ahead in line for further processing. Later, ONP and mixed paper are segregated using an ONP Disc screen. These screens are designed and spaced at a specific angle, which allows the containers to fall, whereas the paper passes over the top. After the mixed paper and ONP are extracted, it is conveyed to a quality control area where manual sorters remove any other contaminants in order to maintain high-quality bales as required by paper mills. Steel cans are extracted with the help of a large overhead magnet. Remaining recyclable containers, mainly aluminum and plastics, move through optical sorting units. PET containers are segregated using air jets and high-speed cameras employed in the optical sorter. Aluminum cans are then extracted with the help of an eddy current, which applies magnetic repulsion techniques that push non-ferrous materials off the conveyor belt into a storage bunker. Polypropylene is sorted using robotic sorting technology. Once all the materials are sorted, they are conveyed to a baler where they are compressed into bales for ease of shipping and transportation.
