County Goes from Zero Diversion to State-of-the-Art Recovery System
Waste & Recycling | 2018-12-21 05:54:43
The 80,000-square-foot facility handles 225,000 tons of materials annually.
By SEATTLE (Waste 360): King County, Wash.’s 50-plus-year-old transfer station was having significant design and operational issues, not to mention it did not take recyclables of any kind. So, the county invested $92.8 million in a new facility.
With this major build, the jurisdiction has gone from zero diversion to 3,658 tons in the first 10 months of 2018 alone. This equates to 16.68 percent diversion. And the site—Factoria Recycling and Transfer Station—receives and reroutes more than your standard blue bin materials.
The state-of-the-art design also just earned gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
Factoria takes in yard waste, textiles and household hazardous materials, from mercury-containing lighting, to sharps, to solvents, to untreated wood.
New building and design sustainability features have resulted in a 35 percent decrease in overall energy use (heat and electricity), including saving 65 percent savings in electricity for lighting. And it saves 1.3 million gallons of water a year.
The 80,000-square-foot facility handles 225,000 tons of materials annually. It has a lot of streams to sort through and move, but new equipment, and especially a large, flat tipping floor, provide more flexibility to organize, process and send on for reuse, says Kerwin Pyle, King County Solid Waste Division project program manager for recycling and transfer stations.
The agency created a 30-year waste volume projection. Then, it resolved to build the largest facility possible for the budget it had, to be able to turn trash into commodities.
Green waste is hauled to a private composter. Hazardous waste goes to a separate, adjoining facility for reuse, recycling or disposal. Asphalt is ground and sent to an asphalt producer to incorporate into new pavement. Wood moves on to a processor to be made into products like plywood. And garbage goes to Cedar Hills Landfill.
Pushing for maximum diversion was a key focus through the entire construction process.
Courtesy: https://waste360.com
