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Taking a dip in the recycling stream

RAY ROUTHIER

— By

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Tim Greenway/Staff Photographer: Richard Vincent, a sorter at EcoMaine, explains the sorting process with Press Herald reporter Ray Routhier in the Pre-Sorting Room at EcoMaine in Portland on February 3, 2010.

Tim Greenway

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Tim Greenway/Staff Photographer: Portland Press Herald reporter Ray Routhier removes a plastic bottle in the Plastic Sort Area at EcoMaine in Portland on February 3, 2010.

Tim Greenway

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Staff Writer

PORTLAND — The job seemed pretty straightforward.

The idea was to stand beside a speedy conveyor belt in the massive Ecomaine recycling facility and pick out things that didn't belong.

I was in the paper area shadowing Richard Vincent, who works as a sorter. Sorters are supposed to pick out things that can't be recycled at Ecomaine, as well as things that need to be sent to other parts of the plant to be recycled.

When we entered the room, about a dozen men were standing along both sides of a 4-foot-wide conveyor belt, winding for a distance of about 40 feet through the room. I watched Vincent deftly pick out bags, boxes, boots and other stuff for a few minutes, and thought I was ready to jump in.

To start me off slowly, Vincent told me to worry only about plastic bags.

So I stood by the belt and began scanning the speeding mass of debris with my eyes. I couldn't believe what people throw into their recycling bags or bins -- everything from soiled diapers and table tops to long lengths of chain. I grabbed for a Hannaford grocery bag and missed. Then I grabbed for a Walmart bag, and got it. Then another bag, and another.

Some were filled with things, like cans or plastic bottles. I found that untying plastic bags and emptying their contents into a nearby bin was tricky to do while your eyes were on the next bag coming your way.

After a minute, I was moving. At least, I felt that way. By keeping my eyes glued to the conveyor belt, I began to get the feeling I was moving while the belt was standing still. And I was beginning to get queasy.

''Don't look straight down at the belt; look ahead to the beginning of it,'' Vincent said, when he realized I was nauseous. ''We've had some guys pass out. We have some guys who don't last a day.''

I lasted about 10 minutes before I needed to step away from the belt. It was either that, or create a mess on the belt that could not be recycled.

A BOA CONSTRICTOR?

''It's never bothered me,'' Vincent said. ''But it does get cold in here. In the winter, I have to go outside to warm up.''

After about an hour at Ecomaine, I understood what Vincent was talking about. The plant is like a giant ice box, with steel walls and concrete and metal floors. So it really holds in the cold.

Sorters also have to put up with the dust kicked up by a speeding stream of discarded materials. I noticed that a few wore masks to help them avoid breathing in the stuff. But Vincent, who has been at Ecomaine for more than four years, says the dust doesn't bother him. (Does anything?)

Ecomaine is a non-profit recycling and waste disposal plant off outer Congress Street in Portland, not far from the Maine Turnpike. The facility handles thousands of tons of debris each month from 38 southern Maine communities, including Portland.

The goal of the recycling portion of the plant is to create giant bales of material -- including plastic, paper and cardboard -- and sell them to manufacturers who can make them into something else.

Ecomaine does single-stream recycling, which means all the recyclable objects come in together. The stuff gets dumped onto conveyor belts and travels through ''screens,'' which are large stations of spinning pieces of plastic that look like stars. The size of the stars, and the space between them, determines what will get through and what will get sent down different paths.

So the sorters are basically looking for things that didn't get properly sorted by the screens.

All kinds of things.

''We've gotten baseboard heaters, a deer and an 8-foot boa constrictor,'' Vincent said.

A boa constrictor?

''It was dead,'' he added.

PURITY MATTERS

After resting for a few minutes, I decided to get back to work on the belt, this time concentrating on big pieces of cardboard. I tried hard to look at the beginning of the belt and not straight down. This helped my nausea a little, but not a lot. After another 10 minutes, I begged off again.

Vincent told me that workers who have motion sickness are often stationed in areas with slower conveyor belts. There's an area near the end of the line, for instance, where the belt sort of crawls along so sorters can do a final check of the ''recycling stream'' to make sure it's nearly all plastic, or all paper, or whatever it is supposed to be.

Vincent and others told me there's no easy way to get the bundles of recyclables to be 100 percent of just one material. But Ecomaine officials told me purity matters, because the plant's ability to sell the recyclable material, and the ability to get a higher price, depends on how close to pure it is.

Vincent says one thing the job has done for him is to make him a lot more aware of how critical it is to get everyone to recycle.

''When I grew up, we just threw everything into one bag and didn't really know where it was going,'' he said. ''But now I know where it goes.''

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com