Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility

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Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility
Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility
General information
StatusOperational
Type Recycling facility
Address472 2nd Avenue
Brooklyn, New York, US
Coordinates 40°39′43″N74°00′32″W / 40.66194°N 74.00889°W / 40.66194; -74.00889
OpenedDecember 2013
Owner Sims Metal Management (operator)
Grounds11 acres (45,000 m2)
Design and construction
Architecture firm Selldorf Architects
Website
www.simsmunicipal.com/locations/sunset-park-mrf/

Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility is a recycling facility at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, United States. Operated by Sims Municipal Recycling, it was designed by Annabelle Selldorf, and its construction involved the use of a variety of recycled materials. The campus contains several structures, including an education center and New York City's first commercial-scale wind turbine. As of January 2022, it is the largest commingled recycling facility in the United States and the primary recycling center in New York City.

Contents

Construction and facilities

The Material Recovery Facility is operated by Sims Municipal Recycling, part of Sims Metal Management, a large recycling company which holds a 40-year contract with the City of New York. [1] The 11-acre (45,000 m2) property sits on the Sunset Park side of the Gowanus Bay, at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. [2]

It was designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf [3] and built on the site of a former New York Police Department impound lot. The pier was raised four feet above what the city would otherwise require to be resilient against rising water levels and harsh weather. [1] [4] Consistent with its purpose, it was constructed using many recycled materials. The buildings are raised another four feet above the pier on recycled glass and stone left over from the development of the Second Avenue Subway project, while the structures themselves are largely built with recycled steel. [4] [5] The ropes used along the pier are selected to cultivate mussels, and three artificial reefs were installed at the end to help cultivate a habitat to attract marine life and birds. [6] It has its own storm water management system to avoid runoff into the East River.

Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility (42856p).jpg
The Material Recovery Facility viewed from the other side of the Gowanus Bay. Barges arrive on the right side, unloading material into the large open tipping building. The education center is just left of center, connected to the tipping building by pedestrian bridge. To the rear-left of the education center is a storage building, while the main processing building sits behind the tipping building.

The campus includes a tipping building where materials arrive, the main processing building along the southern edge, storage buildings, and an administrative building. [3] [7] These structures take up about 140,000 square feet (13,006 m2). [3] The administrative building includes an education center for student and tour groups which includes exhibits explaining how the plant operates. [7] An elevated pedestrian walkway connects the administrative building to the main processing building for public viewing. [3] [7] The tipping building's exterior is composed of exposed steel girders and lateral bracing; according to architectural writer Pavel Bendov, this helped the facility "avoid its fate as another box warehouse". [3]

A scrap-handling crane inside the tipping building, where material arrives before it is processed. Sims Recycling5.jpg
A scrap-handling crane inside the tipping building, where material arrives before it is processed.

A 160-foot 100 kW small wind turbine sits on the north corner of the property, the first commercial-scale turbine in New York City and the city's tallest as of January 2015. [6] [8] It produces about 4% of the facility's power. [6] 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m2) of rooftop solar panels provides another 20% of daily energy. [6]

The total cost of construction totaled $110 million, of which $60 million was subsidized by the city as part of the Bloomberg Administration's PlaNYC 2030 project. [6] [2] The plant opened in December 2013. At the time, Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times praised its design, calling it "understated, well proportioned and well planned – elegant, actually, and not just for a garbage site" and suggested good design principles could work to help sell the public on the idea of recycling, which is necessary in order for the facility to succeed. [5] As of January 2022, it is the largest commingled recycling facility in the United States. [4] [9] [10]

Activity

The plant is New York City's primary recycling facility, and processes three-quarters of its plastic, metal, and glass. [4] As of February 2018, it processes about 20,000 tons of material monthly, up from 15,000 tons three years earlier, [11] with a daily processing capacity of 1,000 tons. [12] [4] The facility's primary purpose is to sort the materials it receives before selling them to other processors. [12] The machinery is manufactured by the Dutch company Bollegraaf. [11]

The main processing building, where a variety of machines separate the materials. Cycle sorters.jpg
The main processing building, where a variety of machines separate the materials.

The material arrives in trucks, mostly hauled from barges, which reduces the total mileage sanitation trucks had to travel previously by about 240,000 miles (390,000 km). [5] [13] It is dumped into a pile on the main facility's floor where large items are removed manually and the rest put on conveyor belt. [1] [11] There are about 2 miles (3.2 km) of conveyors in the plant. [14] Items removed manually include appliances, which can be recycled, and objects which cannot be recycled like bowling balls, which the facility receives about 1,200 of per year. [15] The conveyor line first goes through a slow shredder with large gaps which opens the bags the materials arrive in. [16] Particular materials are pulled out of the stream using specialized machines, for example using a rotating magnetic drum to extract tin cans. Another machine breaks glass small enough to fall through a disc screen to a dedicated stream below it. A drum magnet separates ferrous metals from the glass. [17] Optical sorters identify and separate certain types of plastic and paper, with air jets passing selected items from one line to another. [16] An eddy current separator removes most of the remaining metals before passing through a trommel at the end of the line. [18] [16] Human inspectors are most involved at the end of the process to correct for any mistakes the machines made. The separated materials are then collected, compressed into blocks, and moved out of the main facility, mostly by train. [11] [1] The time it takes an object to be put on the initial conveyor belt to when it is bundled at the other end is between two and ten minutes. [14]

The city pays Sims to process its recycling at a rate of approximately $75 per ton of metal, glass, and plastic that comes from its sanitation trucks. When the value of the materials increases, the city receives a rebate. In 2019, Sims made nearly $25 million this way. [19] The facility's activity and revenue are affected by politics, such as shifting policies in China reducing the amount of foreign recycled material it would accept, and debates over the implementation or expansion of New York's 1983 bottle bill, which allows people to redeem certain kinds of containers for a deposit fee. [19]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recycling</span> Converting waste materials into new products

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its original state. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution and water pollution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waste management</span> Activities and actions required to manage waste from its source to its final disposal

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Materials recovery facility</span> Plant to process recyclates

A materials recovery facility, materials reclamation facility, materials recycling facility or Multi re-use facility is a specialized plant that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers. Generally, there are two different types: clean and dirty materials recovery facilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Municipal solid waste</span> Type of waste consisting of everyday items discarded by the public

Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, as in a garbage disposal; the two are sometimes collected separately. In the European Union, the semantic definition is 'mixed municipal waste,' given waste code 20 03 01 in the European Waste Catalog. Although the waste may originate from a number of sources that has nothing to do with a municipality, the traditional role of municipalities in collecting and managing these kinds of waste have produced the particular etymology 'municipal.'

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glass recycling</span> Processing of turning glass waste into usable products

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waste sorting</span> Environmental practice of separating waste categories to make it easy to recycle

Waste sorting is the process by which waste is separated into different elements. Waste sorting can occur manually at the household and collected through curbside collection schemes, or automatically separated in materials recovery facilities or mechanical biological treatment systems. Hand sorting was the first method used in the history of waste sorting. Until now this method is still used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Puente Hills Landfill</span> Formerly largest landfill in the United States

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sims Metal Management</span> Global environmental services conglomerate

Sims Limited (formerly Sims Metal Management Limited) is a global environmental services conglomerate, operating through a number of divisions, with a focus on: (a) Ferrous and Non-ferrous metal recycling, (b) enterprise data destruction and cloud asset management (c) post-consumer electronic goods recycling and reuse, (d) municipal waste recycling, (e) gas to energy, and (f) waste to energy. Founded in 1917, its primary operations are located in the United States, Australia and the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Single-stream recycling</span>

Single-stream recycling refers to a system in which all paper fibers, plastics, metals, and other containers are mixed in a collection truck, instead of being sorted by the depositor into separate commodities and handled separately throughout the collection process. In single-stream, both the collection and processing systems are designed to handle this fully commingled mixture of recyclables, with materials being separated for reuse at a materials recovery facility.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recology</span>

Recology, formerly known as Norcal Waste Systems, is a waste management company headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company collects and processes municipal solid waste, reclaiming reusable materials. The company also operates transfer stations, materials recovery facilities (MRFs), a number of landfills, and continues to spearhead renewable energy projects. Recology is the largest organics compost facility operator by volume in the United States.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wind turbines on public display</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annabelle Selldorf</span> German-born architect

Annabelle Selldorf is a German-born architect and founding principal of Selldorf Architects, a New York City-based architecture practice. She is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) and the recipient of the 2016 AIANY Medal of Honor. Her projects include the Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, Neue Galerie New York, The Rubell Museum, a renovation of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, David Zwirner's 20th Street Gallery, The Mwabwindo School, 21 East 12th Street, 200 11th Avenue, 10 Bond Street, and several buildings for the LUMA Foundation's contemporary art center in Arles, France.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Brooklyn Marine Terminal</span> Industrial complex in Brooklyn, New York

The South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT) is an intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing complex in the Port of New York and New Jersey. It is located along the Upper New York Bay, between 29th and 39th Streets in the Sunset Park and Greenwood Heights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York City. The site is adjacent to Bush Terminal and Industry City, which respectively lie directly to the south and east. A recycling and waste transfer facility managed by Sims Metal Management is the major tenant. In May 2018, the city contracted partners to activate the largely unused terminal.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Egbert, Bill (December 20, 2013). "Mammoth recycling center opens on Sunset Park waterfront • Brooklyn Paper". The Brooklyn Paper . Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Sanders, Anna (December 12, 2013). "Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility opens in Brooklyn". Metro. Archived from the original on July 23, 2014. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Bendov, Pavel (2017). New Architecture New York. New York, NY: Prestel Publishing. p. 124. ISBN   978-3-7913-8368-2. OCLC   976405424.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Yakas, Ben (October 17, 2016). "Photos, Videos: The Beautiful Trash Graveyard At The Sunset Park Recycling Plant". Gothamist . Archived from the original on April 26, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 Kimmelman, Michael (November 17, 2013). "A Grace Note for a Gritty Business". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Giambusso, David. "Recycling firm unveils city's first commercial wind turbine". Politico PRO. Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  7. 1 2 3 "Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility / Selldorf Architects". ArchDaily. May 27, 2014. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  8. ↑ Geberer, Raanan (January 13, 2015). "From wind to electricity on the Brooklyn waterfront". Brooklyn Eagle . Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  9. ↑ Szczepanski, Mallory (July 21, 2017). "Behind the Scenes of Sims Municipal Recycling's MRF in Brooklyn". Waste360. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  10. ↑ Paben, Jared (January 11, 2022). "Closed Loop picks up a MRF operator with strong financials - Resource Recycling". Resource Recycling News. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Timmer, John (January 18, 2015). "Inside New York City's newest recycling center". Ars Technica . Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  12. 1 2 Walker, Ameena (February 2, 2018). "Tour a Brooklyn recycling facility, where NYC's trash gets a new life". Curbed . Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  13. ↑ Paben, Jared (August 1, 2017). "MRF of the Month: Sims Municipal Recycling Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, New York City - Resource Recycling". Resource Recycling News. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  14. 1 2 "Cool Hunting Video: Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility". Cool Hunting. September 30, 2014. Retrieved February 21, 2022– via YouTube.
  15. ↑ Cummins, Eleanor (June 29, 2021). "No, You Can't Recycle a Bowling Ball (But People Sure Keep Trying)". Curbed. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
  16. 1 2 3 Young, Michelle (December 10, 2015). "10 Fun Facts About the Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, NYC's State of the Art Municipal Recycling Facility". Untapped New York. Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  17. ↑ Workman, Megan (April 3, 2014). "Into the sunset". Recycling Today. Retrieved February 22, 2022.
  18. ↑ "Archtober Building of the Day #30> Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility". The Architect’s Newspaper. November 3, 2014. Archived from the original on August 5, 2020. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  19. 1 2 Muoio, Danielle; Goldenberg, Sally. "Wasted Potential: The fiscal hazards facing New York City's recycling program". Politico PRO. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
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