Courtney Sacco I AnnArbor.com
Every scrap of that 12,268 tons was processed through the city's Materials Recovery Facility - or MRF, as it's more affectionately called - at 4150 Platt Road in Ann Arbor.
Courtney Sacco I AnnArbor.com
The MRF is staffed by a for-profit private company - ReCommunity - that shares a portion of its revenues with the city.
Collected curbside from area homes and businesses by Recycle Ann Arbor staff in tall blue bins, every wad of paper, empty yogurt cup and unneeded water bottle ends up in the same place: on the warehouse floor of the MRF.
From the floor, where the material is pushed around into giant piles, it is scooped onto a conveyer belt where it will be sorted both by hand and by machine.
First, bulky scrap metal and plastics are pulled out by hand. Plastic bags, which clog up the sorting machines, are also removed.
Next, mechanical sorters take their pick of the material still on the belt. Corrugated cardboard is whisked away, and then glass is shattered to fall onto another belt.
A magnet plucks off steel cans, while an optical scanning machine sorts out plastic materials based on their chemical composition.
At the end of the process, a reverse magnet sorts out the aluminum products.
Courtney Sacco I AnnArbor.com
After being sorted into their respective hoppers, the material is pushed through a baler that compacts the products into blocks bound by steel bands. The blocks are stacked in the MRF warehouse until they're retrieved by truck to ship them to a recycling facility.
About 20 tons of recyclable material is processed through the facility in an hour. One shift of employees staffs the facility five days a week.
By ton, the MRF processes more paper than anything else - about 8,260 tons from the city of Ann Arbor in 2012. However, newspaper has the lowest value at $40 per ton.
Aluminum, which has the highest value at $1,000 per ton, saw the lowest volumes in 2012 at 22 tons.
In addition to processing the city's single-stream recycling, ReCommunity contracts with a number of other communities, companies and organizations to process their material.
The University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University and Washtenaw Community College consistently contract with ReCommunity for their recycling, said Nancy Stone, a communications liaison for the city of Ann Arbor's public service department.
Courtney Sacco I AnnArbor.com
The city of Ypsilanti, which also offers recycling to its residents, tends to contract with different entities based on the best market price, Stone said.
The MRF has been managed by a private company since it opened in 1995, Stone said.
The private ownership means contracts can be negotiated and approved in a swifter, more businesslike fashion than with a municipal contract, Stone said.
ReCommunity has also developed a company to turn glass bottles into tiles and countertops, Stone said - a vital contract to have as the market for recycled glass bottles continues to shrink.
Glass bottles melt at a different temperature than windowpanes or car windshields. Many municipalities have stopped recycling glass bottles because it's not economically feasible, Stone said.
That's the same reason the city's single-stream recycling system doesn't accept plastic bags: Their market price is too low and they often are caught in the gears of the sorting machines, Stone said.
Stone said she hopes the list of materials the city is able to accept will soon be extended to carpet.
Recycle Ann Arbor announced this month that they will now be accepting mattresses and securely shredding hard drives at both their Drop-Off Station at 2950 E. Ellsworth Rd. in Ann Arbor and at their facility at 7891 Jackson Road.
Both facilities accept materials that can be recycled but are not accepted through the city's single-stream recycling pick-up.
Click on the markers in the map below to see where Ann Arbor's recyclables end up.
View Single-stream recycling markets for materials from Ann Arbor's MRF in a larger map
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