The Delaware Solid Waste Authority has announced a twenty-year deal to run a cutting-edge automated recycling operation.
On Thursday, Governor Jack Markell (Delaware – D) helped cut the ribbon on DSWA and ReCommunity Recycling’s Materials Recovery Facility (MRF): a 64,000 square foot repurposed area of the Delaware Recycling Center in New Castle.
Gov. Markell sees the opening of the facility as a victory for the economic possibilities that he looked forward too when he signed the Universal Recycling bill into law almost three years ago.
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“Our commitment to recycling is an absolute win-win,” Markell said. “It’s good for the environment and it’s good for the economy.”
DSWA will recycle aluminum, plastics, paper, cardboard, tin and glass at the location. The MRF’s cutting-edge automated bulk handling systems can recover more than 90% of available recyclables and can process over 35 tons an hour.
ReCommunity, which employs around fifteen hundred people at 36 facilities in 13 states, invested $15 million in equipment and improvements to the facility. Those efforts could lead to more than 70 new jobs while having the capacity to process 160,000 tons of waste a year, which EPA Regional Administrator Shawn Garvin considers an exemplary illustration of economic opportunity.
“This facility is an example of the type of thing that can be done by states, by communities, by private sectors that not only helps out the community but helps out the environment,” Garvin said. “This is a choice of how we help our economy as well as protect the health of our children today and into the future.”
ReCommunity is the largest pure play recycler in North America. When operating at full capacity, ReCommunity could reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that released by more than 85,000 cars. And by not operating trucks and diverting waste will significantly reduce landfill usage and wastewater.
In addition to being better for the environment, ReCommunity President and COO Sean Duffy says the company’s focus on rethinking conventional recycling has a number of economic benefits.
“For every ton that they can divert from the landfill and recycle you’re saving precious resources, commodities that we’re going to sell,” Duffy said. “If they can divert it from the landfill where they’re paying money to dispose of it, and they bring it to us, we recycle it, they get revenue in return. So you’re having a cost benefit and a revenue generation.”
DSWA CEO Mike Parkowski proclaimed the location as DSWA and Delaware’s “flagship location” for recycling and hailed the advancement of the MRF’s technology.
“It features the latest state-of –the art technology," Parkowski said. "It’s the best of the best you can find anywhere in the country right now. That’s how good it is. And I’ve been in the business forty-two years, so maybe I know what I’m talking about.”
For now, the operation will immediately create 35 new green jobs and at full capacity can generate more than 113,000 bales of marketable recovered materials.