Where does your recycling left outside get taken? Trucks that pick up your recycling take it to a material recycling center. At this material recycling center your recycling is organized using a process. Moreover, this process consists of the material brought to the center by truck or boat, the material is weighed, the material is organized by its shape and size, plastic in particular is differentiated by optics, material is sorted by hand, and then the material goes into a baler. Why does it get organized? The recycling center organizes the material to sell it to buyers.

In particular, the plastic is sorted into groups using a conveyor belt and optics. A conveyor belt is a machine that moves the plastic into separate piles using an air jet. There is a camera with Near Infrared light that identifies different types of plastic as they pass on the conveyor belt, and it differentiates the type of plastics by its molecular signatures. In case there is a specific plastic being looked for on a conveyor belt an air jet blows that specific plastic to another conveyer belt.

The sorted material is squished into cubes. These materials are shaped into cubes by being processed in a baler that compresses the material and makes transporting the material to the market easier. Overall the recycling center completes the work that we begin. We organize our recycling material so they have it piled up to process it to resell for other companies to purchase.

Recycling materials helps prevent pollution and can decrease the rate of landfills. We get some of our materials from trees or use energy to produce new materials. However, the amount of carbon dioxide that is released from making materials contributes to pollution. We can prevent this by reusing materials instead of making more. This is why a recycling center is important because it prevents releasing carbon dioxide to the air by not using much energy and not cutting down trees. Landfills sometimes have recyclable materials that are buried. Why? We tend to put recycling material in the garbage. As a result, there’s an increase of landfills so there’s more space made for garbage on Earth. We need to conserve land since our population is increasing, so instead of increasing space for garbage we need to save space for people.