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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

recycling with rik


Beau Rich of Spokane Recycling Products takes recyclables to the sorting area, where plastics, cans and paper will be sorted. 
 (Kathryn Stevens / The Spokesman-Review)
The Spokesman-Review

You read this issue of HOME cover to cover and then put it in your blue recycling bin. By collection time next week, it is joined by magazines, jars, bottles, boxes, milk jugs and cans. No big deal, right? Well, I decided to find out what happens to all the stuff after you’ve recycled it in your blue bin.

According to Suzanne Tresko, Spokane Regional Solid Waste System, in 2004, Spokane County residents used their blue, curbside “bingees” to turn in more than 16,000 tons of recyclables.

Once collected, the recyclables begin a journey to be reprocessed into new products again. From curb to consumer, the process goes like this:

First, the recycling truck driver sorts the bingee’s contents into three “streams.” All the fiber (newspaper, magazines, paper bags, phone books) goes in one compartment, plastics and glass in another, and aluminum and steel cans in another. Household and vehicle batteries are also collected and stowed in a separate place on the recycling truck. Then the recyclables are taken to a local recycler – for instance Pacific Steel & Recycling or Spokane Recycling Products, Inc.

The recycler combines the city collected recyclables with recyclables from transfer stations and other recycling sources. The recyclers sort all the various materials into their marketable components, then bale, store and finally ship them to buyers.

Pacific Steel & Recycling and Spokane Recycling Products give the following information about the bingee-related commodities with which they deal:

Newspaper, cardboard and magazines come to them commingled so they must be separated. The newsprint then is sold to Inland Empire Paper in Millwood, which repulps it, combines it with wood chips and produces newsprint.

Cardboard is shipped to Albany, Ore., to be repulped and turned into linerboard, the inside and outside facing of corrugated cardboard. Some also goes to a box plant in Moses Lake, Wash., that makes agricultural packaging.

Magazines go to West Coast paper plants where the pages are de-inked and stripped of special coating, then are also made into newsprint.

Plastic PETE (Code 1) and HDPE (Code 2) are sold domestically or go to Canadian or Pacific Rim “reclaimers.” The reclaimers take PETE (soda and water bottles) and shred them into small flakes, which are melted and extruded into spaghetti-like strands which are chopped in pellets. Clear pellets can be reused in many kinds of bottles, like those made for liquid detergents. Green pellets can be used in carpets or as fiberfill for sleeping bags, pillows and jackets.

HDPE, mainly milk jugs, is also pelletized and can be reused for, among other things, household and industrial chemical/cleaning bottles, oil and detergent bottles, and corrugated drainage pipe.

Clear and green glass goes to a waste glass recycler near Edmonton, Alberta, where it is crushed and sold to the fiberglass insulation and glass container industries. Brown glass goes to Portland to be made into new brown bottles.

Aluminum cans are converted by Anheuser-Busch Recycling in the Midwest into sheet aluminum from which new cans are made.

Tin cans, which are mostly steel, go to a steel mill in Seattle to be made into rebar and carbon steel angles, channels and flats.

Willie Lampe of Spokane Recycling Products naturally sees the value of these commodities to his company, but also sees the benefits of recycling to the community.

“Using the bingees to recycle keeps product out of the landfills,” he says. “And generates jobs.”

Kevin Holcomb of Pacific Steel & Recycling agrees.

“How do you put value on recycling?” he asks. “You can recycle or you can send material to the Waste-To-Energy plant. Recycling saves energy, saves material. Once it’s burned, it’s gone forever. Recycling these commodities is the more economical way.”

Tresko sums up the cost savings for residents.

“The more material in your recycling bin, the less material you have to put in your garbage container so the smaller – therefore cheaper – garbage container you have to pay for,” she says. “Longer term, the less garbage we create as a community, the less we have to pay for building larger facilities to dispose of our garbage in the future. Even better, the more recycled commodities that are returned into the recycle loop, the more we all save in energy consumption and resource extraction.”