The Glass Recycling Foundation (GRF) announced Republic Services鈥� Seattle Recycling Center has been awarded Gold Certification. The facility qualified for the gold status due to its robust glass clean-up system. 聽Republic Services鈥� Seattle facility began operations in 1989. It currently processes 200 thousand tons of material per year, serving residential and commercial customers across Seattle, the greater Puget Sound, and distant communities in Alaska, Idaho, and Montana. The facility utilizes a glass breaker, vibrating table screen, an air separator, secondary fines screen, vacuum system, magnets/eddy current system, and lights removal equipment to sort incoming glass bottles and jars into a clean, marketable material stream. The clean glass is sent to a beneficiation facility that further sorts and cleans the material to produce glass cullet used for manufacturing new bottles, fiberglass, and other products.
鈥淎t Republic Services, we鈥檙e committed to partnering with customers to create a more sustainable world,鈥� said Michael Alvarez, Republic Services general manager. 鈥淏y keeping valuable materials like glass in the circular economy for the long-term, we鈥檙e preserving natural resources, supporting a circular economy, and helping Seattle-area residents and businesses meet their diversion goals.鈥�
The free certification program offered by the GRF recognizes material recovery facilities (MRFs) with additional equipment and operational procedures to clean up glass in both single- and dual-stream systems, resulting in the production of higher-quality and marketable glass.
鈥淩epublic Services鈥� Seattle Recycling Center is the first facility in Washington state to receive glass certification,鈥� says David Marcouiller, executive vice-president of sales engineering at Machinex and a member of the Glass Recycling Foundation鈥檚 MRF Certification Committee. 鈥淲e congratulate Republic on their leadership and dedication to recycling glass and hope they serve as an inspiration to other MRFs to improve their glass recycling processes and increase the amount of glass recycled into new products.鈥�