Penn Waste opens new recycling plant

Penn Waste Inc., a York, Pennsylvania-based waste and recycling company, has opened a new 96,000-square-foot recycling facility in Manchester, Pennsylvania.

The single-stream processing system within the plant was designed, manufactured and installed by Bulk Handling Systems (BHS), Eugene, Oregon. The new facility more than triples Penn Waste’s processing capabilities and has been designed to improve its recovery rates, BHS says. The new MRF instantly becomes one of the largest in the region and the nation, according to BHS.

“Building this new facility reinforces our commitment to the local and surrounding community and to increasing sustainable practices throughout our region,” says Scott Wagner, president and owner of Penn Waste Inc.

The new building and equipment upgrades Penn Waste’s sorting and processing capability to 35 tons of recyclables per hour, up from the 10 tons per hour the old system handled. The new operating system also features optical sorting technology from BHS subsidiary National Recovery Technologies (NRT), Nashville, Tennessee. The NRT units are designed to separate materials more efficiently at a faster processing speed and with less contamination, BHS says.

In 2014, Penn Waste processed 81,000 tons of recyclables through its old facility. That quantity was up more than 50 percent from the 2010 level. With community education and the new capabilities, Penn Waste says it is hoping to double its 2014 record of materials recycled within the next few years.

The company operates a fleet of more than 100 collection trucks to serve more than 175,000 customers in 65 municipalities in the five Pennsylvania counties. Material collected from Penn Waste customers is either recycled taken to regional waste-to-energy sites.

“Our long-term goal is to continue to find innovative ways to waste less and recycle more by diverting recyclable materials from the waste stream, ” says Wagner.

A video "tour" of the Penn Waste MRF can be found here.