Hanley Sustainability Institute Summer Fellows recently had the opportunity to visit the Rumpke Recycling and Resource Center in Columbus, OH, to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes of recycling. I knew a bit about recycling facilities from a TV segment, but had never seen one up close and in action, so I was quite excited to take a tour.
When we first arrived and met our tour guide in the lobby, we got some fast facts about the facility. Rumpke serves a majority of Ohio's 88 counties — many of whose recycling ends up at the Columbus facility. The center opened in the summer of 2024 and cost about $100 million to build and outfit with up-to-date machinery and high-tech processing software. Rumpke processes single-stream recycling, which means anything that can be recycled by Rumpke is combined in your curbside bin, and it all goes to the the facility to be sorted.
Walking Through
We saw sorting in action as we entered the processing room, which consisted of an expansive system of trommels, wheels and conveyors. The first stop was the large initial trommels, where the mixed recycling is taken from the large dumping floor and placed into a series of rotating drums. These drums, we're told, have holes of increasing sizes to sift out broken glass, which is further sifted and cleaned in smaller trommels. The larger items that don't fall through the cracks are sent down the conveyor belt.
We strolled through, watching as workers swiftly removed plastic bags and other non-recyclable materials from a large supply of products that had yet to be sorted. Cardboard and paper are sorted out of this supply first; workers made sure paper and cardboard were separated into their respective lines. We learned that cardboard and paper aren't recycled together, as cardboard is considered a higher-value product. Paper, meanwhile, can be recycled into cardboard filler after it's sorted separately at the facility.
Further down the line, metal is removed from the resulting plastic supply using strong magnetic wheels that work similarly to water wheels to draw out tin. Electronic scanners removed aluminum cans. Aluminum is the most useful thing you can recycle, as it is infinitely and easily recyclable.
Plastics get separated into PP (polypropylene) and PET (polyethylene terephthalate), then are differentiated further (e.g. clear or solid colors, blown or molded plastic). AI scanners help with most of this specific sorting. This is important because these types of plastic have different values and are repurposed differently.
After Rumpke sorts materials into paper, cardboard, aluminum, tin, and various plastics categories, it compresses each material into bales that are sold to local partnering businesses.
While walking through the facility, I was reminded to minimize the need to recycle in the first place, placing priority on reducing and reusing in my everyday life. Despite this, we learned that the best way to recycle in our curbside bin is to have all recyclables loose and not contained in a bag (even if it's just a paper bag). Bags can make it difficult for all the material to come loose in the trommels and be sorted properly.
Takeaways
While it was my first time touring a recycling center, this experience gave me a clearer idea of where my recycled waste is going. We learned that plastic is melted down into pellets, but I wondered about the process involved with that, given how vast the sorting process alone was. I'm still curious about the journey of the bales of material once they leave the recycling facility and hope to learn more.
Throughout my sustainability fellowship this summer, I've focused a lot on explaining topics such as recycling to the public, so seeing the process itself gave me an interesting perspective on the impact each step can have, from education to action. This trip and my fellowship experience as a whole got me thinking about the fact that there are many various facets of sustainability work. We can look at sustainability from a nature conservation angle, or advocate in government for policies that improve public health, or participate in the hands-on work of making sure materials are reduced and reused. I hadn't realized until this summer the many ways a sustainability degree might take me, but now I see many possibilities that I see myself pursuing.
I left the facility feeling inspired to learn more about what I'm most passionate about within sustainability. There's always more to learn, and getting to look behind the curtain for recycling gave me renewed gumption to continue my work in sustainability.