Earth Month Recycling Question

Derrick Kenny

It's Earth Month and what's happening moco is that we're gonna talk today about recycling. Just two short years ago we got a question from a resident that said this.

Resident at AgFair

My name's Lou, I live in Mount County and the building. I was thinking if the county would do something showing how to recycle stuff it goes to recycle as far as cardboard and plastic and people probably throw it together. Somebody has it as a separator once it goes in the building. Is that true or not?

Announcer

Good day and welcome to What's Happening Moho, an a little bit of the podcast of your Montgomery County government.

Derrick Kenny

What's happening? Moho is here at the Montgomery County Recycling Center. He answered the question what's happening with recycling in Montgomery County, Maryland? And we're here with our good friend Jeff Camera, who is the recycling expert here at Montgomery County, Maryland. But what is your formal title, Jeff?

Jeff Camera

I'm the chief of resource conversion here at the transfer station and recycling center.

Derrick Kenny

Oh, wow, okay. And what is it uh that's unique about Montgomery County, Maryland, or some of the characteristics of recycling in Montgomery County, Maryland?

Jeff Camera

Yeah, that's a great question. We're often asked that. One of the big differences with us is that Montgomery County has a dual stream uh recycling program, which means that we collect our mixed paper and cardboard separate from our commingled materials. And we do that for a variety of reasons.

Inside The Recycling Center Campus

Derrick Kenny

Okay. Now, what we're trying to accomplish today is giving people a tour of the how recycling is done at this facility for Montgomery County, Maryland. Um, but because we're audio focused, as well as video, um, we're gonna want to try to give them a lot of clarity. So we're gonna do a quick tour. We're in a room that has a lot of beautiful pictures of recycling efforts, uh, buildings, facilities, and Jeff is gonna take us through them, starting with here. What are we looking at, Jeff?

Jeff Camera

So, what we have here is kind of a large view of our entire campus. Where we're standing now is in our recycling center or our material recovery facility, which is a MERF. This is where all of the residential curbside recycling in Montgomery County comes. So if you have curbside recycling in Montgomery County, which is dual stream, it will come here in which we process that.

Derrick Kenny

And what we're looking at here, Jeff, what is this, a large rectangular building?

Jeff Camera

It's basically a large warehouse that has a lot of equipment in it, which has a combination of manual and also mechanical sorting of various grades of recyclables. Awesome.

Derrick Kenny

Okay.

Jeff Camera

And then this area here is where we handle all of our our plastic, I mean our uh paper and uh cardboard.

Derrick Kenny

And that's a building that's a size building. That's upward north of the main building. Correct. Okay, awesome. Correct. All right, and then where we go to next to see these numbers uh around this map here.

Jeff Camera

So when you come in, when you come into here, when you come in for either a self-guided tour or you can schedule tours online for our facility of what we do here, you'll find this map. This can also be found online. And what these numbers represent are the different areas and the different things that we recycle here. So, for example, if you're a resident and you're coming in for just to drop off your recyclables or your your trash, you would enter through the 355 Frederick Road, which is right here. You would continue up along the road until you come to our upper lot area. This area here is where we will collect. Uh we have a great program. This is an older map, but we have a don't dump donate program here.

Derrick Kenny

Oh wow.

Jeff Camera

So as you continue around the site, you'll notice that everything is on the right hand side. And we've done it that way to try and minimize traffic impact so that it's easy for residents to make a loop and head on out.

Derrick Kenny

Tell us what is happening inside of each one of these areas? Are these areas where residents can come and drop things off?

Jeff Camera

So residents, this is restricted access. This is our rail yard in Montgomery County. All of our waste is transported by rail. Oh, wow. Okay. So we don't have any active landfills. So when people ask, where's your landfill? Well, we do have landfills, none of them are active, which means we don't have any that are currently operating for the disposal of trash. So what we do is everything, all the trash that comes in, we compact, we put it in these rail containers, and we send this on these tracks that goes all the way up through Dickerson currently, is what we have to our refused energy facility.

Derrick Kenny

Oh, fantastic, fantastic. All right. Please continue to walk us through the uh process here.

Jeff Camera

So as we continue here, we have and we're expanding our don't dump donate, which I asked, which I mentioned earlier, which is a program where residents can bring in and businesses can bring in usable building materials, windows, doors, sinks, things like that that are still in good condition, but they don't want to throw away.

Derrick Kenny

So everything and this kitchen sink we can bring in here and fairly. Not just throw it away, people can still find value in it.

Jeff Camera

Right. They can come in, residents can come in, sign a waiver. They if you need a door, you can come in and get a door. If you need a windows, sometimes we have this is limited to stock on hand. Okay. But we also have nonprofits that come in and will take some of the material and they will use it in some of their projects and other in other avenues. Oh, that's fantastic. We also have here in this area a textile where you can bring your used clothing, shoes, things like that where you donate it. We have a nonprofit which comes in. They then will take that, they reuse them. So they'll clean them up, they clean them, and then they use them for a variety of different purposes based on their non-profit.

Derrick Kenny

We're talking clothes, we're talking doors, things, there's other things that you can recycle as well. It's not conventionally thought of.

Jeff Camera

Yeah, you're talking everything from our stand what we consider standard recyclables, which are what comes in here, to other things, including, as I'll mention, things like single-use plastics, wheelchairs, durable medical goods, paint, electronics, all of these types of things are things that we recycle here.

Derrick Kenny

Okay, all right.

Jeff Camera

So, as I was mentioning right up in here, this is our expanded electronics area, which looks much differently. We now have a place where you can bring in everything from TVs to holiday lights. So the holidays come around, you have those strands that you just throw away. We actually can recycle those. CDs, computers, everything we'll recycle through here as well. What are CDs? I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. Even going back as far as A-Track tapes.

Derrick Kenny

So we're we're looking there where you're talking about the place where you can get uh donate or drop off electronics. You have several large bins, you have uh a building on the right, a building on the left. Yeah. So we just uh residents will be guided through when they drop pack the back the cars up and they just drop it off there. Correct.

Jeff Camera

There's signage as you go through, which will identify electronics drop-off. Okay. Books, things like we also have a book area where you can drop off books. So the end of the school year is going to be coming up, right? Okay. So as you're finishing your finals, you're finished your books, your kids are home from college, hey, they don't need their books anymore. If they don't buy them back, which is always a great deal, there's many sources which will buy books back from students, um, and you can donate again. It's a reuse type of program. If you don't have those and you just want to get rid of old encyclopedias, you remember those? Yes. I mean, encyclopedias, what are those? I'm not old enough. Yeah, okay, yes. You can actually bring them here and donate them. And if there's books in here that you would like, you can actually take those books as well. That's wonderful.

Derrick Kenny

So we can recycle books as well. Yes. I know there's there's quite a few people that don't want to throw books away because it's knowledge and there's value there. But there's a way that we can bring the books here, and not only will they not immediately be, I guess, recycled or processed, but they are available to other people to use and make it from.

Jeff Camera

Correct.

Derrick Kenny

That's great.

Jeff Camera

As well as nonprofits. We have nonprofits that come in and they will then recycle through those books. They'll go through, they'll take them, then they sell them out in their in their bookstores or give them out to different parts of the community. Awesome. Okay. Um as we continue up through here, we pass um our electronics. This is an area where a lot of the stuff, the curbside stuff and residential materials will come. Up here we have our bicycles, we'll have mixed paper and cardboard, we'll have plastics, we'll have bottles and cans up here. Um, and then in this trailer here, we also have tires. So tires, for example, are not everybody. You go to you go to get your tires done. A lot of times they will bring them, you know, and they'll take them there for you for a disposal fee. Here, Montgomery County can take up to five tires. You come in, show your show your uh ID. Okay, they'll scan your ID, all that's doing is just saying that, hey, it verifies that you're a Montgomery County resident, and you can take up to five tires a year at our facility.

Hazardous Waste And Special Items

Derrick Kenny

That's fantastic. So you can just bring if you're a county resident, if you're a county resident and you have an ID, you can bring your tires up to five tires. Up to five tires a year. Each year, you drop them off. That's fantastic. Okay. Yeah.

Jeff Camera

When you finish here, you continue around. So if you have those old paint, it's spring coming up. Yeah. Right? Earth months, they're spring. Everybody goes through a spring cleaning. You might find paints, solvents, cleaners, household cleaners, stuff that have been sitting in your cabinets that you don't want in your house, whether it be for children, or you're just you don't want them to leak, right? And you don't have any use for them anymore. You can bring them in here to our household hazardous waste. This is a residential household hazardous waste program, okay, which is open seven days a week. Every day we're open, every hour we're open, they're open. And it's free.

Derrick Kenny

Okay.

Jeff Camera

You can drop off your batteries, you can drop off your scooters, you can drop off anything you want that is of a hazardous nature, anything that has a chemical in it. We don't take medicines, you know, or anything like that, but we will take just about everything else. All right.

Derrick Kenny

And so what we were talking about earlier with the area that has the two uh buildings by the railroad tracks. That's going to be right here. Right right there. Okay, and that's where we did all of the um the um drop-offs of building materials, things of that nature, and then we had an area for books over here next to this building. And then once we get to this area, there's other types of drop-offs, including household items and cleaning materials and things of that nature. Yes. Okay, great. All right, let's keep us going. This is a great tour. I didn't realize how organized the distribution of materials were for residents.

Single Use Plastics And Medical Gear

Jeff Camera

Well, one of the things we try and do here is every time we find an available market, we try and maximize that market and see what we can do, but also realize it's more than just, you know, a one-time or a pilot program. It's something that has to be sustainable. And that's what we look at whenever we introduce new programs. For example, the next two programs I'm going to tell you about actually are right in this area here when you when you make this turn. Right in this area, we have a single-use plastic. Oh, wow. So one of the common questions we're asked, and probably your viewers and are also asked, is what do you do when you buy the big bottles of water and you have that plastic film? Well, that's not recyclable through our recycling center. You don't put that in your blue bin. Oh, okay. Part of the reason is because that's it gets caught up in our machines, and there's a different type of composition for that. So even the grocery bags, okay, even the single-use grocery bags that you get. So all of this now can come up into this area, and we have locations where you can drop off what's considered single-use plastic. Okay. Those single-use plastics we then take, we will then bail, and then we are we will sell that out as a commodity for um to different vendors, but primarily it's used in plastic decking.

Derrick Kenny

Oh wow.

Jeff Camera

So some of you may have, some of your readers and I mean your viewers may have plastic decks. You walk out, their composite, that's what that type of plastic's made out of.

Derrick Kenny

Wonderful, wonderful. And that's at the kind of the far right of the facility. Correct. Right beneath where we were talking about dropping off your liquids or household cleanings and things. Okay.

Jeff Camera

Right next to that is what we have is a program we've had for several years now, is a comp is a partnership with the Department of Aging, the Maryland Department of Aging. What that does is that takes usable, um, durable medical goods, canes, walkers, uh crutches, wheelchairs, beds, everything else. Okay. What they will do is they take that, you donate it, and then they come in when it's full, they pick it up, they bring it back to their facility, they will then sanitize it, and they have mechanics there and and maintenance people there that will pick them up, will refurbish them, bring them to like new condition, certify them, and then they have a large warehouse where people can go onto the Department of Aging website. Oh wow. And also through the State uh Department of Department of Aging, and you can register. So if you have something where you need a wheelchair, but maybe you can't afford a wheelchair, or you need crutches or canes, you can go onto their website and it has a way that you can actually register for those and they can then have it get to you.

Scrap Metal And Free Trash Drop

Derrick Kenny

Yeah, I like I like that we're learning now is that recycling does not always mean that you take material, crush it up, and make it into something else.

Jeff Camera

Then when we come around here, this area here is where you can bring your refrigerators, your white goods, your bulky items, things like that, your lawn mowers. Now with Montgomery County having a leaf blower. Oh, wow. You know, we have our leaf gaffe leaf blower. You can then bring those in here where we will drain the liquids from them. Okay. And we'll take it and all the metals and plastics, those will get recycled. So this area here will make sure that we take all of that out, the Freon, the R22, stuff like that that comes out of refrigerators. We take that. Okay. And then this area here is our scrap metal recycling area. So this area will be for anything that's metal. You can bring it in. Old pots and pans, um stuff like that. You can bring it in, clothes lines for those people that have them, or scooters, anything else. Old barbecues, you can bring them in here. We'll recycle them. And this gets brought out. Um this gets brought out through our scrap metal and we'll continue out from here.

Derrick Kenny

This area was basically located right to the left or beneath where we were just now. Correct. Okay, fantastic. All right, let's keep moving.

Jeff Camera

Then as we continue down here, this is kind of on your exit way. The way we design this is recycle right. You've seen the message in Montgomery County about recycling right.

Speaker 3

Okay.

Jeff Camera

We've kind of taken that whole concept and applied it here so that all of our recycling as you're making the loop is all on the right. And then the very last thing you hit is our public unloading facility, our public unloading facility. Okay. And this here is comprised of six bays. This is where all residential trash, if you want to bring it in on your own, you can bring in trash under 500 pounds. Oh, really? If it's under 500 pounds, you can bring it in and dispose of it for free.

Derrick Kenny

Okay. Sofas, sofas, love seats.

Jeff Camera

All of that.

Derrick Kenny

This trash.

Jeff Camera

Under 500 pounds.

Derrick Kenny

Big bags of trash. Correct. Spring cleaner.

Yard Trim Becomes Leafgro

Jeff Camera

It's primarily for your household, it's primarily for your household trash. Right. So if you do have um a large couch or you're trying to get rid of a bedroom because your kids are moved out and they've gone away. That they may be directed to another area of the site on one of our tipping floors to where it's easier for you to access. You're not having to pick stuff up and trying to throw it over a wall. But by bar by uh for the most part, this is for bagged, mostly bagged trash under 500 pounds. That we can bring in here. And you can also we have ash cans up here for your coals, stuff like that. Spring cleaning tip. Then as you exit the facility, you'll come out and you'll just stay to your right, and that'll bring you back out to where you want to go. If you have, and if I may, if you have yard trim, because that's also something that's coming up, we've just been through the deep freeze of winter. Yeah. So now you can actually bring in your yard trim, you can bring it in, and that comes into this area right here. So this is where all of our leaves, branches, things like that, that you can bring. However, if you do live in the county and you have curbside collection for leaves and grass, it's always best to put those out.

Derrick Kenny

Right.

Jeff Camera

However, if you do bring it here, they can't be in any plastic bags. We'll ask you to remove the plastic bags so that doesn't get contaminated. This material here with all of our leaves and branches, that gets ground up and we process a material called leaf grow. Okay. And we we sell that out commercially.

Derrick Kenny

Oh, that's fantastic. So again, another great use of uh recycled materials. You create you take leaves and other yard stuff and you make it into something that you the county can sell to generate revenue. That's very efficient. Okay.

Jeff Camera

So then we can bring us right back here to where we started.

How The Transfer Station Works

Derrick Kenny

Cool. Now what's what is the transfer station? What does that mean?

Jeff Camera

So this whole campus is considered the transfer station. Oh the idea of a transfer station is primarily where material is brought, it's then transferred from one place to another. It's that's the simplest way to solve it.

Derrick Kenny

Wow, that that makes sense. Because it's literally what you've been talking about, is transferring uh things that one person doesn't necessarily have need for, and then giving it a new purpose for someone else. So transferring ownership or possession one to another. That's fantastic. All right.

Jeff Camera

Whereas opposed to, and real just to clarify, as opposed to a landfill where you go into a landfill, you drop it, it stays there. It doesn't go anywhere else. It goes into the ground. Oh wow. Whereas here, because we don't have any landfills and we are surrounded on three sides by residents in commercial areas, there's no place, it has to go somewhere else. So that's why we transfer it from this facility via rail to other facilities.

Derrick Kenny

How many people um would you say work for the um recycling um part of the other?

Jeff Camera

In this building alone, we have roughly 57 people that are a combination of contractors and uh state employees.

Derrick Kenny

All right, all right. And they're all um working to help process all the things we talked about earlier. All right. So let's let's get an overview of this mixed paper thing.

Paper Line Sorting And Baling

Jeff Camera

You know, and what I'll describe, and which is uh normally a question we have, is the stuff that when somebody puts something in their blue bin for recycling, they normally think it's out of sight, out of mind. They have no idea where it comes from. Right. And so what we do is when it comes to paper, the first area it comes from is a large tipping floor, which we have. This is where uh in the county we have 60-40 split body trucks, which means 40% of the truck is of one commodity, 60% is of the other. That means half of it is commingled recyclable, glass, bottles, cans, plastic. The other side will be mixed paper and cardboard. The first place it goes is they will dump that onto a large tipping floor. Now, a tipping floor is a large concrete pad. So if you look out at a parking lot, picture that with a building over it, except it's made of concrete. Um there, we will load it then into kind of a feed wheel or a hopper. What the feed wheel does is it will level out the material. So whenever you put something in that's very clumpy, picture this as something that continuously rotates, which will flatten the material and spread it out, kind of metering it. So it'll meter it out and kind of a fine level so that when it gets to our picking station, it gets to our screening area where we have four sorters, four sorters will manually pick out things that are not supposed to be in there. Things that are not supposed to be in there plastic straps, some bags, uh things like that, that unfortunately people forget. And sometimes they'll, hey, I've I've purchased, we had a party, I put all the glassware in there, and I put my I put my plastic, I put my uh cardboard out, and it accidentally got picked up. In that case, they'll pick those types of materials out. They actually have an inner and an outer glove. So they wear two pairs of gloves. Okay. Um they also wear sleeves and aprons. Now, the reason for two pairs of gloves, sometimes people put needles, you know, if they're insulin or whatever, um, those happen to get in there. But it's only for their protection. So the inner glove is a cut-resistant glove and a puncture-resistant glove. So if there's any glass, it won't penetrate and puncture their hands.

Derrick Kenny

Safety first, safety first, absolutely. And then we come to the next area.

Jeff Camera

So the next area, once it goes through this line, we have two bunkers. Okay. One is for cardboard, one is for mixed paper. And that's all grades of paper. We sell a mixed paper. And those are the way those are sorted is picture a lot of st wheels, round wheels, except they're stars. Oh wow, okay. So what happens is as the material goes through them, they're spaced out. The lighter materials will fall immediately, whereas the larger, bulky items like cardboard, yeah, will ride across, will ride across the topic, and those go into the furthest bunker. And that's the difference. Our mixed paper and our commingled material.

Derrick Kenny

And these are what large again, most of these things are red. Is there a reason why they're red or it's just what we ordered. It's just what we ordered at the time.

Jeff Camera

Fantastic. And it's these actually will stay in this bunker until we're ready to bail them. Then they'll go along another conveyor, okay, and they'll go through an incline conveyor that goes up about 20, about 22 feet in the air. Okay. All right. That's what this is here. So that'll bring your that'll bring your conveyor. That will then drop it from here, this incline conveyor, which you can see this is mixed paper. We'll put it in top feed and drop it into a baler. Okay. And that's just like if you think of it as a uh, if you're not familiar with the baler, it's like a garbage disposal in your house.

Derrick Kenny

Yeah.

Commingled Line Magnets And Glass

Jeff Camera

You put stuff in, you don't see it come out the other side. Right. But what this will do is this will compact it into bales, and the bales come out the other side. So what we will do is we move this out, we ship it out every day, Monday through Friday. So these bales will then be transported by uh forklift into a staging area until the trucks are ready. Trucks come in, and then we'll put them on the back of the truck. And this is what this is the finish point we get it here. We don't go any further than this. We put it in a bale and then we sell it to brokers and markets. So the co-mingled here, this is our co-mingled sorting line. So this is everything that's glass, plastic, metal, aluminum. Those are the types of materials that come through here. This is on that other side of the truck. Remember, I told you 6040. This is on that opposite side. So what they'll do is this will come in and they deposit it on a tipping floor. Wow. Which is what we have in here again. Now we will receive in anywhere from a hundred and about 135 tons, between 100 and 135 tons every single day. These are compactor trucks, which means that they have a blade which will keep compacting it and compacting it to get as much in there as they can. Oh, wow. So these will already be flattened. A lot of times liquids that are in there, we obviously we want people to drain their liquids. But if you don't and it happens to be in there, it'll compact it, and a lot of times that will the liquids will come out through as well.

Derrick Kenny

So the the processing of the materials starts almost immediately once they get into the truck.

Jeff Camera

In a sense. It's starting to be processed. It helps us out because it flattens it. And we can get more, which means we can get less trucks in here, which then frees up safety for congestion congestion, and we don't have to have as many people interact with them.

Derrick Kenny

All right.

Jeff Camera

From there, it goes through uh what's considered our pre-sort station. Okay. Just like we talked about on the fiber building of pulling stuff out that doesn't belong there, that's the same thing. So this will pull out things like pots and pans or medical devices, or you know, if people put medicine in there, we'll pull this out, that gets, you know, that gets thrown away. But they'll pull in coat hangers. Coat hangers are something while they are metal and they are recycling, they don't get recycled through our system.

Derrick Kenny

This is great. And again, in this picture, we see again that there's actually workers in here using their judgment to remove materials that don't belong. Correct. Fantastic. All right.

Jeff Camera

From there we go through one of our two um mechanical, if you will, separation areas. This is the ferrous metal separator. What this Does is it separate metal and steel away from the rest of the plastics? And this right here is a large magnet. So if you remember when you remember when you were a kid, you take two magnets that are the same and you put them together, the same sides will repel. Oh wow. This actually will attract it. Okay. And this will take all the metal, the ferrous metal, and take it out. Oh, great. That's what this does.

Derrick Kenny

So you're sorting it using uh technology again. And ferrous is what means what, iron or something? Okay, cool. And so what we're looking at is at the bottom you have all the plastics. I guess at the top is what it's like.

Jeff Camera

This is everything that came off of our sorting line. But once it gets to this stage, there's no metal.

Derrick Kenny

There's aluminum, but there's no metal. And there's this big blue thing there that says magnet separators. That's the magnet. The blue thing's the magnet, and at the bottom is all the material. Correct.

Jeff Camera

And there's a and there's a conveyor that runs through here. So what happens is the material will get caught on the conveyor. It's a big magnet. Okay. And once it gets to the end where the magnet doesn't exist anymore, it runs off the end and drops off, and then it goes out through our metal line.

Derrick Kenny

Wow, this one sounds exciting.

Jeff Camera

Yeah, so this is a shaker table. Okay. Does just what it thinks. Sounds like it. It just shakes, right? But what this does is it has two inch holes in it. And what this is designed for is to take anything minus two inches. So anything smaller than two inches, broken glass, pill bottles, things like that that are broken that don't fit in here, that will drop through here and that gets put out into our into our mixed area. Great. Everything else will then pass through into kind of a perforator, our trommel, which will excuse me, this will take all of our glass, separate kind of our bigger glass from the plastics. It then gets put through a flattener. And what the flattener does is puts a lot of holes in it. Okay. And that's so that any remaining liquids can drain out. Oh wow, okay. And it flattens it so that when it comes to our sorting station, our light sort, it's easier for our sorters to pick those things out. So in this station, they'll pick out things like water bottles, milk juds, plastic jugs, things like that.

Derrick Kenny

And we see in the picture again, you have workers here in the line with their safety materials and they're picking things out this way you described. Correct. Wow, that's amazing. Okay. So you have a big comp you have a combination of machinery and I guess uh what do you call it? Um uh manufacturing style processes. Right, manual sorting. Yep, and then you're manual sorting.

Jeff Camera

This area here is kind of what I referred to earlier. This is where, because aluminum is not magnetic, okay, right? This area here is called an eddy current. An eddy current is like those two magnets. If you turn them around and now they're off, now they're the same likeness, they'll repel. What this does is it puts a charge, an electric charge through, and this will repel the aluminum cans, which will go further, and all the other plastics will just drop down. So that's how we're able to separate things.

Derrick Kenny

So it's basically using like an invisible barrier to keep the separate the uh individual things. And in the picture you can see uh uh a can of soda versus uh some type of um bottle. Correct. Oh files, very cool. Okay.

Jeff Camera

We also separate out through the same process flower pots and buckets. Okay. Uh we also do tubs and lids. Oh wow. So obviously, if you have that yogurt or you have that um uh cottage cheese container, we'll separate the tubs and the lids separately. All right. And then the last part we have is our glass sorting station. Okay. And our glass sorting station, what we have is we separate three types of glass. So we have our clear glass, also formerly known as flint glass, but it's clear glass, and then we have a gramber. Now you may be wondering what gramber is. Gramber is a really technical name. Okay. It's a really technical name. It's green and brown glass combined. That's it. It's it's literally that simple. Green and brown glasses. Yeah, so we just we created a commodity called Gramber. Gramber, okay. And so now we get a very similar price for it. So now we sell this out and we're able to sell that out. And then the very end product is our glass bunkers. Okay. So all of this goes outside into glass. Then we have our mixed broken glass. That's anything that's broken, minus two inches, goes out through here. But all of our glass, every commodity we collect here, we do sell. We sell this to a glass manufacturer, and the glass manufacturer then brings that down, breaks that down, separates it by even further, okay, by color, type, bring it down into a sand, and then they use that for manufacture of new materials. Okay. We mentioned earlier about the bales. This is the very similar thing, except these happen to be plastic bales. Oh, yeah, yeah. They kind of look like large blocks.

Derrick Kenny

Yeah, you see, if you look at it closely, you can see the individual, uh, the Sani bottles, the water bottles, and green bottles, all plastics uh mixed together. And so the coming papers, uh paper will end up in bales. The colmeagle plastics, a lot of them ends up in bales. But the glass storage ends up, the glass ends up in bunkers. Correct. Okay.

Jeff Camera

And so do steel and aluminum. So this is steel and aluminum bales as well.

Derrick Kenny

So bales for everything except for glass. Correct. Fantastic. And you can see in the image here, there's a lot of processed materials here.

Jeff Camera

So to give you an idea from a daily basis, which even compounds it a little bit more that people can more get their hand on, is every day through this facility, just between just commingled materials, we'll receive in between roughly 100 and 135 tons a day. Oh, wow.

Recycle Right Rules And Closing

Derrick Kenny

And tons. What what what do you want residents to remember about recycling that can help the county be more efficient or serve residents better when it comes to processing all of these types of materials?

Jeff Camera

You know, that's a that's a really good question. And one of the things that we always want them to do is if when in doubt, don't just assume everything goes into your blue bin. Okay. Okay. The best thing to do is if you don't know what to recycle, is to go through to the Montgomery County website. Go to our DEP website, go on to DEP resource conversion, go on there, or even when you go onto the main website, it'll say trash and recycling. There's a link on there, and it'll say how do I. Right. And you can click on that link and type in what material do you have? And it will tell you exactly how to recycle that and how to how to handle that in Montgomery County.

Derrick Kenny

Incredible, incredible. Huge thank you to you and your entire team, which I didn't realize how many people were involved in this recycling process as well as machines. And even now, if you listen carefully, you can hear some of the processes in place. Is that what we're hearing? Yes. And so, how long have you uh been in this type of industry and and what type of um expertise? Um we always like to try to bring uh share with people um who are some of the people um serving them and how they came about um to bring provide these types of services.

Jeff Camera

Yeah, no, that's you know, and that's something that unfortunately gets lost in everybody that works here, not everybody that works here grew up and said, hey, I'm gonna go into recycling. Right. Okay, that was not my path. That's okay. No, my path started out um in manufacturing, in a sense. But I've been in the recycling and solid waste business for over 35 years.

Derrick Kenny

I know it doesn't look like it doesn't look at all. Like you started when you were five.

Jeff Camera

I didn't know it was child labor laws in the county must be a little lax, yeah. Um but I started in California. And then I worked for public sector. I worked for a small city in California, and I kind of learned the industry on the back of a garbage truck. Okay. You know, it's like if you're gonna do something, you need to learn it. So I rode the back step and I I humped the garbage and I learned about it. And then as over the years, I kind of escalated up into different areas and learned kind of the overall structure of how to do things. And I've been fortunate over the 35 years to um work in in various areas, both domestically and internationally. But I've been with the county for going on 20 years now.

Derrick Kenny

So that's what's happening, Moco. It's um Earth Month, and we are celebrating it here by showing you the fantastic processes that's in place to bringing value to the residents of Montgomery County through recycling. Thank you so much, Jeff Cameron, for being here today. And thank you for watching and for recycling. Enjoy your Earth Month, and that's what's happening, Moco. Please share, like, and subscribe.

Announcer

I don't think anyone take over the house.