Do you suspect that the recycling that you so painstakingly separate and put at your curb is just thrown in the landfill? You see all that mixed material being hauled off and you wonder, how could that really be recycled? Well, here is some good news . . . in the City Different, your recycling is recycled. It is taken to Santa Fe’s own recycling facility called the Buckman Road Recycling and Transfer Station (BuRRT) off of 599 and Buckman Road. This facility diverted more than 13,000 tons of cardboard, aluminum, plastic, glass, paper, phone books, brush, electronics, tires and fluorescent bulbs from the landfill last year.

It ends up that collecting recycling mixed at the curb is the way to go. More people participate this way because it is easy. At the BuRRT, mechanical means and human sorters are used to separate the cardboard, paper, plastics, aluminum and tim. Once sorted, material is made into giant bales and sold to manufacturers who make new products from the old materials. Some of this remanufacturing happens in factories close to Santa Fe. Old newsprint goes to a factory near Flagstaff, Arizona which sends newsprint to The New Mexican putting the used paper back in our living room in as little as 30 days. Old cardboard from BuRRT goes to a factory near Grants, New Mexico that makes new boxes out of 100% recycled cardboard.

Glass goes to the BuRRT for recycling too. That recycling is a little more challenging. Glass is ground into two products: one that is like sand and another with larger pieces. The BuRRT uses these materials for landscaping, but unfortunately not too many people want to landscape with it. Manufacturers often need pure material to make things like crystal clear glass so they buy real sand instead of the mixed color recycled glass. The crushed glass can be used instead of dirt in some projects, but dirt is inexpensive and available so the glass gets left behind again. Glass can be used in road base, but strangely enough, we might not have enough glass to make a mile of road. City of Albuquerque and Earthstone are setting up a plant to make a product like vermiculite out of recycled glass. Hopefully that product will be well-liked and lots of glass can be recycled at that plant.

So, your recycling is not tossed and recycling in Santa Fe is creating jobs and saving our land. Santa Fe could and should recycle a lot more though, so go ahead, recycle, it WILL make a difference.

(For more information about solid waste in Santa Fe, come out to Green Drinks on August 25th at La Choza to hear Regina Wheeler “Talk Trash.”)