Montgomery County officials want to build a new recycling facility in the next few years and add robots to make sorting more efficient. The county’s environmental director said the improvements are aimed at bringing Montgomery up to speed with “21st-century standards” for recycling.
The county’s Department of General Services issued a notice to prospective developers on July 15, asking for proposals for potential sites of the new facility. The county is considering whether a neighboring county would be a partner and host the new site.
The county’s main recycling center, the Materials Recovery Facility, was built 28 years ago. It can process 80 tons of materials per day, which include commingled bottles and cans, as well as paper. Between 130 and 170 tons of materials are taken to the facility every day.
Another recycling center devoted to paper opened two years ago and can process 25 tons per hour, but it, too, is exceeding its designed capacity, according to a county press release.
Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection Director Adam Ortiz said 50 to 60 tons of materials are shipped every day to recycling facilities outside Montgomery County, including some outside Maryland.
Part of the need for a new plant, Ortiz said, stems from recycling contamination at the current facility, or the amount of waste improperly placed into the recycling stream. He said the department is looking at investing in robots to sort materials instead of humans.
“We’re not taking advantage of robotics and optical sorters,” he said, referring to the current practice. With new technology, “there’d be a fraction of [our] nonrecyclable material today.”
Ortiz said recycled materials are run through a baling machine that squishes materials into cubes roughly the size of small cars.
“We take those bales, and they’re weighed and sold on the commodities market,” he said.
Ortiz said a new precise sorting method for Montgomery County means new products made from recycled goods can be sold for higher prices. One ton of commingled materials properly sorted could sell for $300, compared to $25 before it was sorted, he said.
If recycling loads are too contaminated, they are sent to the county’s incinerator in Dickerson, to be burned into ash, Ortiz said.
County Executive Marc Elrich has pledged to close the incinerator, but county officials have said that would require the county to achieve a recycling rate of more than 80%. The county’s recycling rate is currently 60%.
Some jurisdictions around the country are looking at the benefits of adding robots to their recycling operations to transition from a double-stream to a single-stream system.
This summer, Sarasota, Fla.-based Single Stream Recyclers, a private company, installed a robotic system powered by artificial intelligence, according to CNBC. The robots can process 70 to 80 items per minute, which is twice as fast as humans.
Sarasota County’s solid waste department still has double-stream recycling, but is switching to single-stream, said Brianne Grant, a spokeswoman for the county. The county is considering using Single Stream Recyclers, she said.
A new site for Montgomery County’s plant could potentially be in a neighboring jurisdiction, such as Prince George’s County or Frederick County, said Ortiz. Montgomery would form a partnership with the other county on solid waste issues, he said.
According to the county’s request for submissions document, the site must be in an industrial area with access to major roads such as Interstate 270 and the Intercounty Connector.
The site must meet several requirements for accommodating a warehouse with a 4,000-square-foot unloading area, a ceiling at least 40 feet high and adequate storage space for trucks and trailers. Applications are due Sept. 20.
Ortiz said the Materials Recovery Facility was near the Shady Grove Processing Center and Transfer Station in Derwood because of the access to transportation. But there is little room to expand the recycling facility, he said, due to the number of trash and solid-waste disposal operations at the transfer station.
“There’s so much stuff happening there, we just don’t have the elbow room,” he said.
Dan Schere can be reached at Daniel.schere@moco360.media
