Today’s MSW management systems are highly integrated and include various options in materials collection, materials recovery, composting, combustion and landfilling. A thorough examination of a waste management system should consider factors from the point of waste collection to final disposal. One waste management option involves increasing recycling within the city and thereby decreasing the city’s overall disposal needs. By transforming waste materials into useable resources, recycling represents a method of managing solid waste while reducing pollution, conserving energy, creating jobs and building more competitive manufacturing industries.
The city-owned facilities would have benefited the city by eliminating the high costs associated with the need to ship materials at greater distances to obtain better prices from private contractors. In addition, the inclusion of modern separation technologies could lower operating costs and improve the quality of processed material, decreasing the overall waste management costs of the city.
A materials recovery facility (MRF) accepts materials, whether source separated or mixed, and separates, processes and stores them for later use as raw materials for remanufacturing and reprocessing. The main function of the MRF is to maximize the quantity of recyclables processed, while producing materials that will generate the highest possible revenues in the market. MRFs can also function to process wastes into a feedstock for biological conversion or into a fuel source for the production of energy. Although these waste management options of chemical transformation of wastes through combustion in conjunction with energy recovery and biological transformation in the form of aerobic and anaerobic composting are viable and proven technologies.
