Rumpke emphasizes education, career development with Columbus MRF

When Rumpke Waste & Recycling announced plans to construct a $50 million material recovery facility (MRF) in Columbus, Ohio, much attention was paid to the advanced technology that would be incorporated into the MRF with Rumpke officials calling the MRF the “most technologically advanced recycling center in the United States.”

The Cincinnati-based MRF operator has designed the Columbus facility to account for the evolving recycling stream, with technology to address as many commodities as possible. But just as important as the recovery of recyclables were the company’s community partnerships.

Rumpke Director of Recycling Jeff Snyder says that in developing the Columbus facility, called the Rumpke Resource Recycling Center, the company wanted to focus on environmental and sustainability initiatives as well as education—not just for consumers but also for those seeking careers in the recycling industry or those currently studying its impact.

He describes Rumpke’s efforts in Columbus as a three-phase approach, noting partnerships with neighborhood organizations, The Ohio State University (OSU) and COSI (Center of Science and Industry)—an interactive science center that opened in 1964 to offer educational resources and hands-on learning to people of all ages.

The first phase involves the creation of a research and development (R&D) center in collaboration with OSU, allowing students and faculty to have a space inside the MRF to work on-site and undertake R&D, engineering, sustainability and green economy projects, among others.

As the facility has progressed, Snyder has met with officials from OSU’s Sustainability Institute—a collaboration between academic and operations units across the university that aims to establish OSU as a leader in sustainability research and applications—to determine the direction of the partnership.

“It could be anything from communications to how brands can make products that can be more highly recyclable. We can provide space for capstone projects,” he says. “Ohio State has a huge engineering department and robotics department, [and] we have robotics today, so how can we incorporate artificial intelligence [with] what Ohio State knows? And [how can we] incorporate that into current manufacturing or sorting of recyclables? How can we get better at sorting that what we are today?”

Snyder adds that Rumpke felt it was “critically important” to partner with OSU in the development of the Columbus MRF and to usethe research being done in its own neighborhood.

In continuing with its commitment to education, Rumpke also is developing a recycling resource center with a focus on career development. Snyder saysthe center will offer job training for various environmental careers and internships and other training opportunities.

“Maybe they want to be in the material recovery field [or] be a CDL [commercial driver's license] driver. … Maybe they want to understand recycling end users more [or] how products get made back into new products,” he says. “It could be material marketing and getting research and development. All those things I think are all part of that development education center.”

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Finally, Rumpke is partnering with COSI to create a 2,500-square-foot education and outreach center on-site that will give people the opportunity to learn what happens to material “from the time they put a recycling item in the bin to the time it’s made back into a new product [and] what happens in between,” Snyder says.

He adds, “To be able to walk through this education center and be able to understand how the equipment works, how an eddy current works, how a ballistic separator works, how a magnet works, how an optical scanner works … to understand that and then also understand end markets … that’s the education center. It’s not just coming in and saying, ‘You know, recycling is great.’ It really gets down into the nitty-gritty of what the process is, which is critically important to me and to Rumpke.”

Not specific to any program will be MRF tours in which people can come to the facility any time during business hours and walk on a platform around the building, starting at the beginning where material arrives and following it through the operation to when it gets baled and is ready to be put on a truck. “To be able to see that entire process from start to finish and be able to walk the entire facility … is pretty special,” Snyder says.

He promises a lot of work is going into Rumpke’s Columbus education center “to do this right,” adding that the company wanted to ensure this facility stands out as a way to help people understand the recycling process.

“I still get asked, probably weekly, ‘You guys don’t really recycle [the material], do you?’ … A select few people really know what happens to it after it leaves their house,” Snyder says. “We’re hoping that this can help educate those folks, and we’re going to publicize it to where people know they can come and see it.”

Snyder puts much emphasis on promoting the Columbus MRF’s public accessibility in hopes that the more visibility residents have on the actual recycling process, the better the recovery rate. “I don’t know of a MRF in the country that does that today,” he says. “If people start to believe in recycling, maybe it can raise that participation level … even better than where we are today, especially in central Ohio.”