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Recycling Center Upgrade Allows Surge In Processing

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Chicago area recycling company is stepping up its recycling capabilities and plans to hire more people to do it.

Lakeshore Recycling has invested $8.5 million dollars in a Machinex system that will allow the company's Heartland division in southwest suburban Forest View to recycle 110,000 tons more material than it did before.

Company CEO Alan Handley said the system also separates paper, glass, and plastic products on its own -- for the most part. Before Machinex was put into use, Heartland recycled about 5-10 tons of cardboard a day. Now, with Machinex, Heartland can process 20 tons per hour.

Even though the company is becoming more automated in one way, Handley said there will be another 100 people hired to do a certain kind of sorting as well as maintenance of the system.

"We need human labor to pick out of the waste stream, materials that are not able to go in system…for example, a bike chain, a rope, things like that that would stop the system from operating. So, we'll still need people to do pre-sort work for us," he said.

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Handley said it makes much more sense for his company to continue to try to recycle as much of the waste stream as it can, because it has to pay for every load of garbage it dumps in a landfill, unlike many recycling companies that own their own landfills.

He said the automated system "takes source-separated recyclables, glass, metal, paper, cardboard; runs it through an automation process with the help of human labor; and diverts it to different locations where it's separated, obviously, and baled."

Those recycled materials are then sold here in the United States and to other countries.

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