A major regional recycling plant in the Twin Cities has finished a $23 million renovation to increase its capacity, as the state aims to recycle more and throw away less.聽Troy Hanson is the director of post collections operations at WM, which recently showed off the updated plant. Hanson said the 15-year-old facility 鈥� off Broadway Street in northeast Minneapolis 鈥� was due for improvements. 鈥淧opulation is growing, recycling is becoming more popular 鈥� we鈥檙e going to need more capacity,鈥� Hanson said.
Improvements include new AI sorting technology, in place of some hand-sorting. Separating out different materials is a crucial step in the process 鈥� sort wrong, and waste can end up sent to the landfill. And, sorting needs to move fast. The WM plant in Minneapolis processes dozens of tons of recycling per day, hauled in from Minnesota, the Dakotas, northern Iowa and western Wisconsin.
With the new AI equipment, cameras and lasers scan materials as they move along the plant鈥檚 conveyor belts. They can tell a polypropylene yogurt container from other plastics, for example 鈥� which Hanson said used to get missed in the sorting process because they鈥檙e small. 聽鈥淚n our old technology, they would be difficult to capture. Now, we鈥檙e able to train and program an optical sorter to be able to identify those materials, capture those materials and ultimately those materials now are repurposed and recycled,鈥� Hanson said.