Recycling Old Ideas With the Essefficist
Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, again with the weekly column! Ayyyeeeeeesh! Once again back is the incredible, the rhyme animal, the untypeable E, public enemy number one. This week the Essefficist returns with a question from the inimitable Windy C, political junky, one-time music empress, vicious card shark, and fashionista extraordinaire:
Question for the Essefficist -- now that we've got the big blue bins from Sunset Scavenger, I want to know how do they sort out the recycling? The bins take everything, plastic, paper, cans, bottles -- is there a machine that knows how to sort or do they get humans to do it?
yrs -- windy
Well, Windy, we've found in the past that when a reader asks how an important local entity conducts its activities the best thing to do is to go right to the source. After getting transfered around the Sunset Scav phone system a couple of times, we had the pleasure of speaking to Robert Reed, Director of Corporate Communications for Sunset Scavenger. (It's amazing what wonders the flimsiest of media credentials can do for a feller.) After speaking with Mr. Reed for a bit, the first thing that the Essefficist wants to say is that, not surprisingly, San Francisco has one helluva recycling program and we should all be proud of it. So anyways, Windy, the short answer to your question is "both." People and machines labor hand-in-hand to sort your recyclable junk at a Pier 96 worker's paradise called Recycle Central.
Sunset Scavenger, now part of a larger entity it spawned called Norcal Waste Systems, is employee-owned and has been recycling in San Francisco since 1921. Not too long ago, San Francisco residents did a lot of their own recyclable-sorting by placing bottles and cans (just clap your hands) in those blue crates we used to have and paper in separate bundles and then carting it all out to the sidewalk along with their trash cans on garbage day (which is Monday morning for the Essefficist, which is always confusing on long holiday weekends). This program wasn't so efficient, though, so in 2001 Sunset Scavenger started a new program in which they distributed those black, blue, and green wheelie bins we all use now and bought a bunch of new specially-designed garbage trucks to collect them. As everyone knows, the black ones are for straight-up trash, the blue ones are for recyclables and don't require any presorting by the public, and the green ones are for food scraps, yard waste, and other materials fit for composting. (By the way, did you know that you can put your wax-lined paper milk cartons and coffee cups in the green bins? The Essefficist didn't and was pretty glad to find out. We knew they weren't recyclable in the blue cans so we just threw them in the black ones.) The new cans have lids, which reduce loose debris on the streets, and their wheels make them easier to move around, especially for the elderly. But the main benefit is that they make recycling quicker and easier, thereby reducing the amount of waste going to landfills; recycling went up at least 25% in areas with the three can system.
So now we get to the heart of the question. The contents of the blue garbage cans go to Recycle Central at Pier 96. (The green cans' contents, along with food scraps from 2200 restaurants around the City, go to a modern new facility outside of Vacaville and become a nutrient rich compost that's sold to vineyards and organic farms. Cities all over the place are now modeling composting programs on San Francisco's.) The commingled material -- metal, glass, and plastic bottles and cans as well as paper -- goes into a "single stream" sorting system. It travels by conveyor belt through a series of automated mechanisms and hand-sorting stations; Reed says there's "an art to it." 
First it all goes through a "disk screening" mechanism that separates bottles and cans from paper (and newsprint from mixed paper). A vacuum sucks up computer paper, envelopes and letterhead and sends clean material to baling machines. Bottles and cans continue on to the Container Sorting Line. A strong magnet removes steel and tin cans from the belt and puts them into a large storage cage. (The Essefficist is considering putting in some really good earplugs just thinking about this place.)
Aluminum cans are removed by a mysterious machine called an Eddy Current Separator. Plastic and glass bottles are sorted by hand by individual workers--the Essefficist has a mental picture of Laverne & Shirley--who each pull out their assigned material, such as clear plastic, opaque plastic, colored plastic, clear glass, and colored glass. All the materials are then sent to secondary recycling facilities such as paper mills. (Colored plastic bottles, for example, go to a company in the East Bay that makes flexible border material for landscaping.)
If all that isn't enough recycling nirvana for you, Windy, then you'll be glad to know that Norcal Waste Systems also has a new indoor facility at their Tunnel Road site that sorts and processes construction and demolition materials like wood, metal, concrete, asphalt, and sheet-rock. Feel better now?
As always, Email your questions to the Essefficist or post 'em in the comments. And c'mon, send in more questions or we're going to have to start making them up. Tighten up your panties, boy!