Phoenix opens new materials recovery facility to expand recycling
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Summary
City of Phoenix staff marked the grand opening of a new materials recovery facility at the 20 Seventh Avenue transfer station, saying the facility uses new sorting technology to divert more residential recyclables from landfill and to support a circular-economy approach.
City staff marked the grand opening of a new materials recovery facility at the 20 Seventh Avenue transfer station, saying the facility will expand the city’s ability to sort and sell residential recyclables.
Staff member 1, a City staff member, described the site as “a state of the art facility” and said the city has worked “for the last 4 years to get [it] up and running.” Staff member 2, a City staff member, added, “This beautiful facility will help make sure that we can recycle more of what you put in your blue bin.”
According to staff, recyclables dropped in blue bins are taken to one of the city’s two transfer stations (the event occurred at the 20 Seventh Avenue transfer station) and then processed at the materials recovery facility, where equipment and workers separate cardboard, paper and different types of plastics and remove contaminants. “As it goes through the entire conveyor, it’s cleaning itself up and sorting through that,” Staff member 1 said. Staff member 1 said the processed material “comes out as a completed bale, as what you’re seeing here. And then they get shipped off to be sold.”
City presenters framed the facility as part of a push toward a circular economy: “We are trying to be leaders in what we call the circular economy. Taking things that might have once been trashed and turning them into new useful products,” Staff member 2 said. Staff member 1 noted Phoenix’s longer history with recycling, saying the city “was one of the first cities to implement a recycling system” and that the facility on this site replaces a plant built in 1998.
Staff described the redesign as a response to changing commodity streams, saying the earlier plant was built for a different mix of materials (more office paper, newspapers and glass in earlier decades) whereas current streams include more cardboard and plastics because of increased online ordering. The presenters described the facility as intended to divert the “most amount of waste from that landfill” by creating pathways for reuse.
No formal votes, ordinances or funding details were presented in the remarks; staff did not specify capital cost, operating budget or funding sources during the comments captured in the transcript.