You might think that once you throw out your garbage you’ve done your part to keep the world clean. In many ways you have however that garbage has to end up somewhere and that somewhere is usually a landfill. Landfills are the quintessential “thing” that nobody wants in their backyard. However, we just can’t function as a society without having a place to dump all of our garbage. That doesn’t mean we can’t be smart about dumping our garbage and that is how recycling was born. With the goal of reducing the mass of a landfill, recycling takes materials and converts them back to their raw form and find a way to repurpose those materials. You are already probably part of a recycling program in Columbus with a weekly pickup of your papers, plastic, glass, or aluminum cans. But what about all those items that might not make it into the recycling bin but are still worthy of recycling? That’s where landfill mining comes into play.

Landfill mining is a process whereby companies can take the garbage at a landfill and converted into fuel by burning it safely. But this is not always a profitable endeavor because of all the digging involved and because you just don’t know what you’ll be digging up. That’s why you’ll find many recycling centers located right next to a landfill. Savvy recycling companies can spot incoming truckloads of garbage and know if there is value in diverting that truck load from the landfill to the sorting center. Once that happens increase the chances of finding more reusable and recyclable materials.

One such operation can be found in the Ohio Valley facility where recycling and trash are processed under one roof. At this facility the recyclables are pre-sorted, baled and sent on to larger material recovery facilities (MRFs). Material from the Ohio Valley facility is usually transported to Columbus where it is refashioned into new product material.

Among one of the big items that calls for recycling are construction materials and furniture. Every construction site generates a lot of waste but that waste can still be put back into use if handled properly. For instance pieces of drywall can be ground up and used as drywall. The next time you’re at Home Depot check out the label on the drywall and you’ll probably find it has been made from recycled materials. This can also lower the cost of that drywall.

Recycling furniture is a bit more intensive of an operation. First of all, you need to hire a professional crew of junk haulers like Junk King Columbus to pick up your furniture and make sure it gets to the right recycling center. Once there, that furniture is broken down and separated into its different components. They’ll be a pile for the wood, the metal, the foam and all the other materials that went into the construction of that piece of furniture. Those piles are then shipped off to the appropriate repurpose and centers. You’ll be able to see this in action the next time you look at a label on a sofa or loveseat. It should tell you just how much of that has been made from recycled materials.