Day 34

Today's Activity: We took a field trip to Albuquerque's Recycling Facility. We got a great tour by an intern from Keep Albuquerque Beautiful! and the facility supervisor Frank. Albuquerque started recycling in 1993 and the facility hasn't received much updating since then. The recycling that comes in is hand-sorted by men and women from a local homeless shelter, who are paid minimum wage for their efforts. The different materials are then baled, much like hay, and sold to the highest bidder. The supervisor boasted that the facility generated $160K last month alone. Who knew recycling could be such a profitable enterprise?

Plastic jugs awaiting pickup. These are shipped to the east coast to be turned into carpet fiber.Newspaper recycling is done in a closed loop. It only takes three weeks for a newspaper to make it back to the recycling facility after traveling through the paper processing plant, the printing press, and the coffee table.
Shredded paper brings higher bidders than newsprint or cardboard so it's baled separately.
A week or two of recycling in Albuquerque.
The mounds of crushed glass were everyone's favorite. The glass was very smooth and a second pile was crushed so fine, it was almost like sand.
Always something to do! There's a huge amount of glass yet to be recycled.