No need to sort those recyclables here

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Have you ever tossed a Coke can in the trash and been on the

receiving end of a nasty stare?

It happens to me all the time.

“Aren’t you going to recycle that?” an environmentally conscious

friend will ask.

I am quick to defend myself and tell them that in Surf City the

folks at Rainbow Disposal take care of that task for us. But no one

ever seems to believe me.

“Do you really believe they sort it?” they scoff.

The answer is yes.

Now, to be honest, I have never been much of a recycler -- or at

least, I have never been gracious about doing it. I simply do not

have the space or patience to sort my trash into numerous bins.

But at last I live in a city where that is not necessary.

A tour of Rainbow’s facility reveals an incredibly elaborate

operation with conveyer belts, “shakers,” shoots, and numerous hand

pickers clad in bright blue hard hats, work gloves, goggles and nose

plugs.

The waste, Rainbow’s Vice President Jerry Moffatt said, is picked

up at your curb and brought back to Rainbow, where it is all dumped

out onto the floor in huge piles. Some bigger items are pulled out by

huge loaders, and the rest is pushed into the conveyor system.

Now, this is no little conveyor system. It’s an huge series of

industrial-sized belts and tunnels. The trash is taken to the

material recovery facility, which has a series of machines that

separate items by size and weight. Any hazardous materials that

residents might have thrown into the regular trash, such as car

batteries or pool chemicals, are pulled out first.

The trash is sent down five conveyor belts along which 175 people,

through different shifts, hand sort it. Each is assigned to look for

three to five items -- such as aluminum cans, paper, cardboard,

glass, plastics and wood -- which they pull out and send down the

appropriate chute.

Loads of trash not sorted into such bins will often go through the

sorting process two or three times, Moffatt said.

Sorted materials are then bailed into loads 1,300 to 1,600 pound

loads, twice the size of hay bails, and taken either locally or

overseas to be recycled.

So, not only do residents not have to sort their trash, but you’re

helping create jobs by being lazy. Is this the epitome of the perfect

American town or what?

“That’s the nice thing. You really don’t have to do anything,”

Moffatt said. “We do it all.”

Rainbow is also one of the leading employers of developmentally

disabled people in the area, President Ron Shenkman said. It also

employs a large number of people who live in the Oak View area,

providing good jobs and regular paychecks, he said.

So start being conscientious and stop sorting your recyclables.