Many LSU students are familiar with the blue recycling bins around campus, but few could tell you where the stuff in those bins go when thrown in dumpsters, then tossed in trucks and hauled away.
For most, the act of recycling begins with a hazy understanding of what goes in the bin and ends with a vague hope that it will, in fact, be taken someplace and recycled somehow. For Aidan O’Neal and Peter Kelly, that wasn’t enough.
O’Neal and Kelly are officers and outreach coordinators for the LSU sustainability club Geaux Green. Both juniors, O’Neal studies environmental engineering and Kelly is double-majoring in geography and philosophy. This semester, the two decided to follow the blue bins, going behind the scenes to see where they went.
That search led them to the outer bounds of Baton Rouge. Here, an obscure facility sits on the side of a long and dusty road. Walls of great, concrete blocks surround the site. Trucks rumble in and out at an opening toward the front.
Few people know what goes on here, or even what it’s called, but this is the heart of recycling in Baton Rouge, though no recycling actually happens here.
This is the Republic Services Materials Recovery Facility. Those in the industry call it “The MRF,” pronouncing the acronym so it rhymes with smurf. There are many facilities like it across the country, but this is the only one in Louisiana.
“We looked it up online,” Kelly said. “We were kind of like, ‘Alright, there’s this MRF, Materials Recovery Facility. What’s going on there?’”
But the two Geaux Green officers struggled to find more information. At first, they couldn’t even get a number to call—one that was connected, anyway.
“We were trying to figure out who to contact online, and we found like seven different numbers for this place, and none of them were set up,” Kelly said, laughing.
O’Neal even called 311, asking if they had any idea how to get in touch. No luck. The MRF was a ghost. Every time they came close to grasping the facility, it turned to air in their hands.
“We were kind of at a dead end,” O’Neal said. “It was at the point where we were about to just drive there and knock on the door and be like, ‘Hey, we’d love to chat.’”
Then, an acquaintance gave them a number that finally worked. O’Neal made first contact with the elusive MRF to see how he, Kelly and Geaux Green could learn more.
LSU’s sustainability club is service and education-oriented. At monthly meetings, members discuss how to implement sustainability into their daily lives, hear guest speakers and talk about community events.
The club also comes up with a handful of sustainability-oriented projects each semester, but some get put on the backburner, O’Neal said. “So this year, we decided we’re going to pick one thing and get an answer completed, you know, create a deliverable. . .,”
Demystifying recycling became that deliverable. After a long and harrowing search, O’Neal and Kelly brought a small group of Geaux Greeners to tour the MRF in mid November.
The MRF is operated by environmental services company Republic Services. Republic holds the residential waste contract for East Baton Rouge, meaning they pick up, transport and dispose of almost all the waste produced in the parish.
“Basically, if you have something to get rid of, we’ve got a way to do it,” said Manager of Municipal Sales Steven Smith, who guided Geaux Green through the MRF. “And recycling is a large part of it.”
No actual recycling, however, takes place at the MRF. Instead, the MRF is a machine for sorting.
When trucks carrying recyclables enter the MRF, the first thing they do is drive onto a massive scale. The scale operator takes their gross weight, then the trucks dump their contents onto the MRF “floor,” a covered area about 50 yards long and 25 yards across where the sorting process begins. On their way out, trucks stop at the scale again to get the net weight of the materials they’ve dropped before leaving.
Most of the trucks that arrive at the MRF are part of Republic’s residential fleet: about 170 vehicles, each with the capacity to carry 800 homes-worth of recyclable materials, according to Smith. Other trucks come from commercial outfits, some as far away as Mississippi.
From the MRF floor, a loader grabs chunks of material, placing them on a conveyor belt.
“Then it starts moving,” Smith said.
In the facility’s heart, the sorting is done. Magnets suck aluminum cans from the belts, dropping them in “bunkers,” areas where distinct recyclable materials are separated out. Pneumatic computers identify different plastics and push them with a precise burst of air from the conveyor into other bunkers.
There are people inside the machine as well; they sort materials by hand. 18 work on the line, including the loader operators.
When a bunker fills up, the materials are taken to a baling machine, which presses the sorted recyclables into massive cubes and wraps them with wire. The MRF bales cardboard, aluminum cans, paper and three types of plastics: number ones, twos and fives. Once made, the bales are stored until the MRF sells them to regional companies: paper mills and plastics manufacturers. That’s where the materials are actually recycled into new products.
On Geaux Green’s tour, O’Neal and Kelly exchanged excited glances, walking among the stacks of towering bales. Already, the MRF was presenting them with new mysteries.
Inside the MRF, it’s incredibly loud. Machines buzz and shriek. It also smells overwhelmingly of trash because half of all the material that comes here for sorting is actually garbage.
Walking the facility, Smith shook his head at the nonrecyclables forming in mountains around the MRF.
The cardboard, empty cans, old papers and plastic containers separated into heaps around the premises were a precious commodity. To Smith, the rest was aggravating:
“Garbage!” he yelled over the din. “Nothing but garbage!”
Each day, the MRF processes 42 tons of material, 21 of which goes straight to the landfill. According to Smith, there’s far too much garbage in recycling.
Sometimes entire truckloads of material have to be turned away at the gate. MRF operators inspect rigs from third-parties that dump at the facility. If there are too many nonrecyclables in a load, they can’t accept any of the material.
“We would love to have the labor and the technology to pull all the good stuff out, but we just don’t have it,” Smith said. “If it’s too contaminated, we just have to throw it away.”
Good recyclables can also get too contaminated by trash to be useful. Pizza boxes are a no-go, as are plastic containers that still have food in them. Plastic bags are a point of contention, too, because they can’t be recycled and many have unusable trash inside.
“It’s education,” Smith said. “Some people just don’t know any better,” then he looked around and frowned. “Some people are too lazy.”
Andres Harris knows this all too well. From 2006 to 2013, he ran LSU’s solid waste and recycling program. Now he runs the MRF as its operations manager. In his office, he has built a shrine to bad recycling.
Overflowing from the shelves onto the floor is Harris’ collection of garbage. There are swords, guns, mannequins, autographed baseball bats, top-dollar sneakers and haute couture with the tags still on them. There are lamps that still work, speakers, powertools, books, toys—all found within the recycling dropped off at the MRF.
“We use this as a teaching tool,” Harris said. His office and the oddities within are the last stop on the tour.
“People think we can recycle anything,” he said with a smile. “We can’t.”
“Wish-cycling”, O’Neal calls it. Knowing little about what happens behind the scenes, we sometimes try to recycle things wishing, rather than knowing, they can actually be used.
Could that change if we knew more?
For Kelly and O’Neal, their trip to the Materials Recovery Facility was just the beginning.
First, they followed the blue bins on campus to find the MRF. Now, they plan to follow the MRF’s bales to parts unknown, recycling plants yet to be discovered and ripe for exploration. It’s an adventure for them, and a pursuit for knowledge and something they’d like to bring back to LSU once they’ve come to the end of the line.
“Going forward, we want to look into the larger system of recycling,” Kelly said. “Like, once the MRF has these large bales of recycled materials, where does that go? And what happens at those plants?”
A bale sits in an outdoor storage bay at the Republic Services Materials Recovery Facility in Baton Rouge, La. on Nov. 8.
