Rosemary Varner pulls a cart into the Signal Mountain recycling center Wednesday afternoon. The center recently switched to single-stream recycling, which means not having to separate recyclables into paper, glass, plastic and metal.
Staff photo by Jake Daniels/Chattanooga Times Free PressA mountain of dirty tin cans, old newspapers and sticky soda bottles is piled nearly to the ceiling of RockTenn’s two-story recycling facility on Main Street.
About 7,000 tons of unsorted recyclable material – stored in 5-by-2-by-3-foot cubes – fill an adjoining warehouse.
The mountain of trash will be slowly, steadily pulled onto a brand-new $3 million machine that sorts the junk into neat piles of papers, plastics and metals.
More recyclables will come in, though, and the process will start over again.
“It’s the future of recycling. It’s where everybody’s going,” plant general manager Jeff Snyder said. “It’s huge. Your kids won’t have to worry about where they put their trash 20 years from now.”