Friday, July 4, is a County Holiday in observance of Independence Day and the offices of Charleston County Government and all staffed Convenience Centers will be closed. Curbside recycling collection will not occur on Friday, July 4 with Friday's collection pushed back to Saturday.
Recycling Center Online Tour
When the recycling trucks enter the recycling center, the first step is to drive across the scale to be weighed. Charleston County's Recycling Center tracks how much material is recycled based on the weights provided by the scale.
After being weighed in, each truck tips their load of recyclable material onto the tipping floor, which is located just outside of the recycling center.
A front end loader maneuvers the recyclables into a metering drum, which is a piece of equipment that is used to feed material at a constant rate onto the conveyer belt which transports the material inside the facility.
A conveyer belt feeds the recyclable material up to a sort line.
On the sort line, plastic bags and plastic film are removed by hand. It's important to capture plastic bags at this step to prevent them from wrapping around processing equipment which can lead to costly repairs and system shut downs.
The remaining items move through a cardboard screen, which consists of a series of rotating discs that carry the large flat pieces of cardboard across the screen while all other materials fall thru to another conveyor.
The separated cardboard is placed onto a conveyor belt and moved to the baler.
The baler packs loose cardboard into a large bale (similar to a brick) for easy loading and shipping.
Glass is broken up by the discs on the cardboard screen. These small pieces fall thru to a screen onto a conveyor belt and are transported outside. This material will be loaded onto trucks using a front end loader then shipped to a manufacturing processor.
After the glass and cardboard have been separated, the remaining materials move across another screen. This screen moves light paper products across rotating discs while plastic, aluminum, and metal containers fall through onto another conveyor belt.
Paper moves across a conveyer belt and gets deposited, creating a large pile of paper on the processing floor. Once the paper accumulates, it gets moved to a baler to be packaged into a bale, just like the cardboard.
Meanwhile, the plastic, aluminum, and metal containers move across a conveyer to the final sorting line. At this step, plastic containers are manually sorted by type.
The separated plastic containers are stored in large cages until it is time to bale them. The cage door will open, spilling the plastics onto another conveyer belt.
The final step for plastic containers is to be baled according to each commodity or type, such as PET plastic.
A magnet is used to collect the steel and aluminum cans.
An eddy current pushes aluminum cans onto a separate conveyer belt and sends the material to the baler.
The sorted and baled materials are temporarily stored until there is enough material to fill up a truck.
Trucks back up to the loading dock and a fork lift loads the bales on the truck. The materials are then transported to processing facilities where they are made into new products.
