Listen to the Januray 4, 2024 This Week In Kirkland Podcast to hear more about the tour!!

Kirkland’s former Mayor and councilmember Penny Sweet, Deputy Mayor Jay Arnold, Interim Public Works Director Truc Dever, and the City’s solid waste team had the opportunity to tour Waste Management’s upgraded state-of-the-art Cascade Recycling Center. WM recently undertook a substantial remodel and upgrade of this facility, to improve recycling sorting and outcomes. The Cascade Recycling Center is where City of Kirkland’s recycling goes to be sorted after being collected from residents and businesses. It was Kirkland’s first chance to see how the facility functions after many upgrades. The results are greater efficiency, less material disposed as residue at landfills, and more recyclables available for new products.

The $40 million investment at the center in Woodinville is expected to increase overall recycling capacity by 50% with the potential to process up to 650 tons of recyclables per day! The facility is equipped with intelligent sorting technology that links advanced optical sorters and volumetric scanner with eddy current separators for maximum efficiency, versatility, and automation of the sorting process. The 82,000 square-foot facility is expected to reduce landfill waste and boost the capture rate for the most environmentally significant materials – aluminum cans, paper and cardboard, and plastic bottles.

Key takeaways for Kirkland community members are to keep recycling responsibly, and to not place items such as plastic clamshells, plastic bags/films, or items smaller than three inches into the recycling. Fifteen percent of materials sent to the facility are disposed of as garbage – costing $168/ton which impacts future garbage rates for residents.

It’s reassuring to see the sorting of recyclables at the Cascade Recycling Center, because we can follow recyclables from collection through sorting to baling, and know the materials are getting recycled! With the advanced technologies at the facility, more content will be recycled more efficiently. Recycling starts at home, find out what goes in the blue cart at http://kirklandwa.gov/recycle.

Intelligent sorting technology definitions:

Optical sorter – an automated machine that sorts solid products using lasers and can recognize an object’s color, size, share, structural properties, and chemical composition. The sorter compares objects to user-defined accept/reject criteria to identify and remove defective products and foreign materials and separated products of different grades or types of materials.

Volumetric scanner – is a weight measuring system technology that provides real-time dynamic load volumes for trucks in-motion. The system uses 3D laser scanners, a laptop or PC, and mounting hardware to scan trucks in-motion and provide automatic volume calculations for loaded trucks.

Eddy current separators – is a machine that uses a powerful magnetic field to separate non-ferrous metals from waste streams. It creates eddy currents in the metals, which cause them to repel the magnetic field and be ejected from the conveyor belt. Recovers metals such as aluminum, copper and zinc.