Something Green’s Afoot in Orange County! State of the Art Recycling Line opens for Business

The Sorting Line: Abandon All Hope of Landfill, Ye Who Enter Here!

Some good news for a change from California. Irvine, CA just opened a new recycling line to help California reach its goals of diverting all waste from landfill to the marketplace.


Duane Woods, Sr. Vice President, Waste Management, addresses the assembled throng.

A Who’s Who of community and environmental leaders converged for the opening of this enormous, state of the art, optical sort recycling line in the heart of Orange County. The scale of the sort line itself is astonishing. Capacity is doubled in the facility with this news line, capable of handling 15 tons of waste every hour. The line will handle all commercial waste, paper, plastics, metals, as well as construction and demolition waste. Concrete, wood, asphalt and other materials will be recycled and go on to build another building, foundation or roadway.


Jason Rose, General Manager, San Diego & Orange County Waste Management, faces a teeming press corps.

The trucks feeding the line, all 129 of them, run on clean natural gas. The line itself uses state of the art optical sorting to separate materials. A light beam identifies each type of material, and an air jet or vacuum then puffs or sucks that piece out and gathers it with its own kind. Paper, PET, metals, other plastics are all separated this way, requiring less manual sorting. Fewer hands in the waste stream means fewer injuries and risk, and Waste Management received a Sharp Award for this facility, the only waste and recycling company to win this prestigious OSHA award. An Oscar can’t be far behind, for Best Supporting Role in a Zero Waste Campaign. 


Employees at the new facility meet the press.

The new sort line was built in response to growing consumer demand and government interest in green programs to both reduce the amount of material waste going to landfills and to encourage reuse, recycling and recovery. Additionally, the sort line will play an important role in reducing Orange County's landfill deposits and carbon emissions footprint as the new line will increase the facility's waste diversion to 30,000 tons of office paper, metals, plastics and other materials processed annually.  

Rosalie Mule, California Integrated Waste Management Board

But all this is just the beginning. As Rosalie Mule, a California Integrated Waste Management Board member and a key influencer in Orange County environmental initiatives remarked," We are not recycling unless we buy recycled content." With a persistent streak akin to her name sake, nobody doubts she’ll get the job done.

An Irvine council member was proud to report a 66 % waste diversion rate to recycling in her region. Irvine began curbside recycling in 1988, and in 1990 began an apartment and multi-family dwelling recycling program.


Local Boy Scout Troop Tours the Facility to earn a Recycling Merit Badge….

Mark Tettemer, the mayor of Lake Forest, CA has introduced Goodwill and Waste Management to explore including a Goodwill donation center within the new facility. Reuse saves even more energy and embedded engineering than recycling.

State of the art collection and sorting, private and public partnership, innovative new ideas and relationships - this facility has it all. On your next trip to California, skip San Francisco and Disneyland, and head out to Irvine to tour the latest in waste to resources!

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