Green Machine® recently completed a mixed-materials MRF upgrade for Winters Bros.Waste Systems based out of Long Island, New York at one of the company’s transfer and recycling centers. The pre-existing equipment at the facility was originally built by Green Machine® in 2003, with some additional upgrades throughout the years, from a Green Eye® hyperspectral optical sorting system, MSW sizing screen and magnetic separation technology.
“Our latest mixed materials MRF upgrade for Winters Bros., is designed to handle both mixed residential post-recycled MSW and mixed dry commercial waste,” explains John Green, President of Green Machine®. “The commercial dry waste they are handling includes industrial loads that consist of 50% corrugated content, with the balance being trash and other recyclables.”
With the post-recycled MSW they receive, the material has already been collected and processed through a dual or single-stream program. Winters Bros. is able to further extract valuable materials from this waste stream prior to shipping materials off the island for disposal. For mixed MSW materials they are able to process between 35 and 50 TPH, while being able to process 20 TPH of dry commercial waste.
Winters Bros. operates 13 transfer stations, 8 recycling centers and multiple collection operations, across Long Island, New York and in Connecticut.
“On Long Island, there are no landfills for MSW, almost all of the commercial waste that is generated on Long Island is shipped off the island to landfills in Upstate New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio.” says Bill Brennan, VP of Transfer and Recycling Operations for Winters Bros.. “We are committed to recovering valuable recyclables from the waste stream, for the betterment of the environment and to decrease the amount of MSW volume that needs to be transported off the island to costly landfills.”
The newly installed Green Machine® system allows Winters Bros. to more efficiently handle both bulky dry waste and MSW materials. Green Machine’s® patented Green Eye® Optical Sorter is a key technology for this upgrade. The Green Eye® uses artificially intelligent hyperspectral technology to automatically identify and sort a wide range of materials, offering very clean output and efficient recovery of valuables, reducing labor costs while increasing throughput.
“Our Green Eye® gathers information based on an object’s molecular structure,” says Green. “This technology is like no other sorter, and is solving a multitude of industry material processing challenges with efficiencies exceeding 94%, at ever-increasing sort speeds.”
With the new MSW separation screen, additional magnetic separation and the addition of the Green Eye® Optical Sorter, the amount of recyclables that Winters Bros.will recover from their residential MSW stream has increased dramatically. As a result, Winters Bros. is also sending less waste to landfills.
“We are the biggest and best recycler on Long Island,” says Brennan. “We’re always looking to enhance the effectiveness of our facilities. The new technology from Green Machine® makes it possible to recover even greater amounts of recyclables from the waste stream, resulting in higher rates of recycling and less trash to ship to distant landfills. With these system upgrades, we are confident that we will remain the number one recycler on Long Island, as we work to preserve and protect our environment in a cost-effective and environmentally sound manner.”
In mixed materials MRF applications, operators should be looking to collect the ‘low-hanging’, high-value recyclables, with limited labor. With a system like Winters Bros.’, running 50 TPH, the number of sorters required would be about 10. With additional optical sorting, they could remove even more sorters and further increase throughput.
