JULY 2014 – On the evening of June 18, 2014, Sims Metal Management celebrated the official opening of their material recovery facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The event honored Sims and their partners for all of their hard work over the past 15 years to make the facility a reality. Tom Outerbridge, General Manager of Sims Municipal Recycling, and Bob Kelman, President of the Sims North America Metals business unit, both spoke about the great success of the facility.
The MRF has the capacity to sort all of the curbside residential rigid plastics, metal, aluminum, and glass collected from all five NYC boroughs. Guests toured the impressive visitor’s center to see interactive displays and short videos about how each portion of the sorting system works.
The Bollegraaf system is capable of processing 1,000 tons per day of bottles and cans and features 16 TOMRA optical sorters. The optical sorters are TOMRA’s newest autosort 4 models, introduced in 2013, which eliminate the lamps used on the autosort 3 models and introduce FLYING BEAM® technology. They will identify and sort 12 different marketable products for the city.
The facility will assist the city in reaching the Mayor’s goal of diverting 30% of the city’s waste from landfills. Most of the recyclables will be delivered by barge to reduce truck traffic on the city streets. All material is debagged and the plastic film and paper is taken out with ballistic separators and separated by four TOMRA optical sorters into clean end products.
The system has been featured on multiple news outlets, including CBS and NPR. VAN DYK Recycling Solution’s technician Anno Cazemier and project manager David Lukas will appear in an upcoming television special for National Geographic.
VAN DYK Recycling Solutions is North America’s leading designer and system supplier of world-class recycling and recovery technology, and the exclusive distributor of Bollegraaf, Lubo, and TOMRA machinery. They specialize in proven technology in the fields of sizing, sorting, recovery, and baling of recyclables. Their systems provide solutions for single stream, commercial waste, C&D, MSW, waste-to-energy/fuel, presorted plastics, and e-waste markets. Technologies in their arsenal include high-capacity pre-press flap balers, sensor based sorters, PaperMagnets®, StarScreens®, PaperSpikes®, density separators, air systems, trommel screens, and more. Boasting 2,400 profitable plants, their turnkey service fully equips with design, installation, training, and superior, lifelong support.