In honor of America Recycles Day, WM, the city’s recycling processor, announced completion of the $40 million automation update of its Philadelphia Recycling Facility. The upgraded facility is expected to process up to 192,000 tons of material per year and is already processing recyclable bottles, jars, cans and paper collected from homes and businesses in Philadelphia and nearby communities.
The facility’s technological advancements are intended to:
- Collect more types of plastics
- Utilize sorting technologies, supported by artificial intelligence, that allow conveyors and optical sorters to communicate with each other, and with technicians, to improve material quality
- Include an additional optical sort line that serves as a final quality control measure for any recyclables not initially captured.
This project is part of WM’s enterprise-wide plans to invest more than $1.4 billion in new and upgraded recycling facilities across North America from 2022 to 2026, which is expected to add approximately 2.8 million tons of incremental annual processing capacity. With the demand for recycled content in products anticipated to rise, these planned investments seek to enable WM to increase its ability to manage more recycled materials and potentially enhance access to recycling for its customers.
