Welcome to the Penn Waste Recycling Facility Interactive Tour. Click on the link below to begin and learn how your recyclable materials are sorted for reuse - helping to greatly reduce waste!

The process begins with the collection of your recyclables by Penn Waste. Our modern recycling trucks allow separate storage of paper/cardboard from other recyclables. Once full, the trucks head to the facility.

When a Penn Waste recycling truck returns to our recycling facility it makes two stops. The first involves unloading all items except for the paper. These materials are staged in "the pit", awaiting the sorting process.

At the second stop the truck unloads all paper, cardboard and magazine recyclables. These items are staged for loading and transport directly to paper reprocessing plants, where they'll become new paper products again.

Back at "the pit", all other recyclables enter the sorting process. All materials are first fed onto a conveyer that transports everything including bottles, cans, jars, jugs etc. into the recycling facility.

Once inside the facility, all recycling materials are automatically transferred to another conveyer belt system that is the sorting line. Several stations are along the sorting line, each occupied by Penn Waste personnel.

As the materials travel along the sorting line and through each station, the person operating that station is responsible for sorting out a type of recyclable & throwing it in a bin that stores only that type of recyclable.

Some stations are automated using innovative techniques. For instance, a strong magnet picks up all steel cans passing through the steel sorting station. At the end of the line only aluminum cans are left for collection.

Once the different storage bins are filled to capacity, their contents are released separately onto another conveyer system that will prepare the materials for transport to plants that will recycle and reuse them.

All plastic containers, aluminum cans and steel cans are released from their storage bins separately onto the conveyer system and are compacted, turned into bales and then relocated outside of the recycling facility.

Separate stacks and rows of aluminum can bales, milk jug bales, plastic bottle bales and steel can bales are created. The separated glass is stored in large containers. All materials are now ready to be transported away.

The final step at the Penn Waste Recycling Facility is the loading and transfer of the separated materials onto trailers. Glass is placed in covered haulers, while bales are loaded onto flatbed trailers.

Each sorted item is then hauled away to be recycled into a new product, greatly reducing the need for new raw materials. Thanks for taking the tour - Penn Waste and your efforts are working together to eliminate waste!