Reaching

It’s getting hotter and hotter in Vegas, and we are running a bit short on ideas of things to do. Since outdoor activities are becoming less comfortable, we decided to reach a bit and take a tour of Republic Services lone recycling center in Southern Nevada. Thank goodness we won't be here in the desert too much longer!

What I thought was a photo op prop turned out to be the real thing. Each of the recycling trucks are equipped with two drivers’ seats – duplicate steering wheels, gas and break pedals, the whole thing in duplicate. That way the often-lone driver can use the automated arm on either side of the vehicle to pick up and empty the bins on the curbside, regardless of which way he or she is traveling through the neighborhood!

We learned how labor intensive the process is. Although they attempt to use various machines to separate and bundle the different types of material – paper, plastic, glass and metal. Some amount of separation is done by machine, but in the end, nearly everything has to run by a human in order to be properly separated. It’s hard to believe just how intensive it is.

Most of the recycled material is sent overseas. While it would be nice to think we would just use the results of all our recycling effort here, it turns out that the US pretty much has no manufacturing capability to reuse paper or even aluminum cans really. Republic sells what it can overseas where recycling manufacturing capabilities (or maybe just cost structures) exist. Interestingly we learned that there is no real market to recycle glass bottles. They are just crushed up and put in the landfill.

All in all, it was an interesting tour, and we learned a lot about how to make recycling work.

Talk to you soon!