
DATE: Thursday, November 13, 1997           TAG: 9711130507

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, staff writer 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  116 lines

BEACH RECYCLING: A FRESH START HIGH-TECH PLANT KICKS OFF NEW ERA.

Two mayors blew shiny silver whistles Wednesday and the Tidewater Fibre Corp's. new $2.5 million trash sorting facility clattered to life, ushering in a new era in the region's recycling efforts.

The building contains some of the latest equipment in the recycling industry, including magnets that repel aluminum cans off conveyor belts and an ingenious device that separates papers from containers with spinning rubber disks.

Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf said she was ``impressed, thrilled'' after she and Chesapeake Mayor William E. Ward looked over the assortment of belts and bundling machinery that comprise the facility.

They were among roughly 65 local leaders who attended the ceremony culminating eight months of planning after Virginia Beach awarded Tidewater Fibre a curbside recycling contract in April.

The initial phase was delivery of 114,000 containers to Virginia Beach residents who need only throw their recyclables into one bin, set it by the curb, and let the company pick it up. As the roll- out took place over the late summer and fall, the 35,000-square-foot sorting facility was constructed.

All together, Tidewater Fibre has about $8 million invested in containers, trucks and its new plant on Diamond Hill Road, near Campostella Drive.

The process of sorting through paper and aluminum is fairly simple to state but more complicated to pull off. Even as the equipment was operating, company executives were fine-tuning it.

The building's interior is essentially divided into two operations, one for sorting fibrous material, such as newsprint and other papers, and the other for containers, such as glass, aluminum cans and plastic bottles.

Material collected from homes is first trucked to the Diamond Hill facility and dumped onto a large concrete floor, called a ``tipping floor.'' Conveyor belts carry the refuse up a 45-degree grade where spinning rubber disks separate the paper from the containers, which tend to fall away into a separate conveyor belt while the paper moves on. Containers such as plastic milk jugs that don't fall away are then sorted by hand when they reach the top of the conveyor.

On the floor, a different conveyor belt carrying cans, bottles and plastic jugs moves through a series of machines that diverts plastics and glass into their proper places.

The aluminum cans are the last to go. As they reach the end of the line, a magnetic system that uses an ``eddy current,'' which is made from a rare earth metal, repels the aluminum into a separate sorting facility.

From start to finish, it may take an hour to sort through 12 tons of material, said Michael Benedetto, vice president of Tidewater Fibre.

While the equipment worked well Wednesday, Benedetto was somewhat bothered by the amount of paper and plastic that remained mixed together after it was supposed to be separated.

``We're still fine tuning it,'' he said. ``We were hoping that once we ran it through the system all paper would go one way and the containers would go another. We never expected 100 percent separation and no one promised it, but there's more paper mixed with containers than we like. As soon as we work that out, that will be a big help.''

Benedetto used the ceremony to remind Virginia Beach residents to learn when recycling is scheduled for pick up and to have the blue bin on the curb by 7 a.m.

``We've been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the recyclables,'' he added. ``We expected it because this is not a new program. The SPSA program set a nice base and got a lot of people educated about what's generally allowed and what's not.''

The biggest challenge, he said, remains plastics.

``Not all plastics can be recycled,'' Benedetto said. ``This program just accepts plastic bottles.''

At $3.7 million annually, Virginia Beach's recycling program is the most expensive in South Hampton Roads. Chesapeake and most other South Hampton Roads municipalities are served by the Southeastern Public Service Authority. But the Beach program promises to reduce the city's landfill costs by $2 million each year, meaning its annual costs will be about $1.7 million, or roughly $1.50 per home per month.

Virginia Beach recyclers are, if anything, persistent. Participation in some neighborhoods already has hit 95 percent, while overall the rate is closer to 74 percent.

Under the SPSA program it once used, Virginia Beach diverted about 10,000 tons annually from the landfill.

When the new program achieves peak performance, it will divert 40,000 tons of recyclable trash each year. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

STEVE EARLEY/The Virginian-Pilot

Workers and high-tech equipment sort recyclables at the Tidewater

Fibre Corp.'s new $2.5 million trash sorting facility in Chesapeake.

Graphic

RECYCLE THIS:

Paper - clean newspapers, including inserts (remove and discard

plastic bags)

Corrugated cardboard - clean and dry

Chipboard - cereal and cracker boxes, paper six-pack holders,

etc.