Eco Tech: Zero Waste: M.R.F.

But before plastic can be recycled into anything else, it has to get collected, sorted, sifted, washed, and transported. A lot of energy spent for a plastic bottle. So what amazing machine could sort through this stuff automatically? Meet MRF. MRF is an acronym for a material recovery facility. This mammoth invention can tackle all 154 tons of recyclable materials it receives every day. It might look like garbage, but this MRF is cutting edge. It's equipped with technology that enables MRF to separate materials from a single stream. Single stream recycling is really a situation where we've taken sorting your recycled material in a controlled environment, such as a recycling facility, it's able to sort it automatically. So recycle your old multicolored bins, because being green has gotten even easier. It's dumped in one large pile on what we call the tipping floor. From there, the tipping floor goes on to conveyors, to various screens. So it first goes to a cardboard screen. And then from that, it goes to another section where the newspaper is removed. And then the remaining material is the containers. Aluminum cans, the tin cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles, are gone through another sorting process, where the glass is separated. The tin is separated by magnets. And then the aluminum is separated by an eddy current, which an eddy current actually causes the aluminum cans to jump off the conveyor belt. An eddy current uses magnetic fields to separate the materials. We use centrifugal force. We use magnets. We use gravity, all these things that help us in the process of recycling the material and separating the material to make it a commodity that's acceptable to those businesses that need it to make their products. Once the material is completely separated, it's packed into dense bales ready to recycle. We recycle about 5.5 million tons of recycled material every year. Within that 5.5 million tons, we recycle enough paper to save 41 million trees. Next, how the science behind this seaweed can save.