Rumpke Waste & Recycling will invest $60 million to upgrade its recycling facility in St. Bernard. The company says the changes will allow it to process more materials and accept new types of recyclables.
"It's going to be something that's going to help improve our efficiencies, our recovery rates, reduce disposal rates, and basically just do a better job than what we're doing now," Recycling Region Manager Brad Dunn told WVXU.
Rumpke reports it currently processes more than 500 tons of material daily.
Dunn said the upgrades include more optical scanners rather than disc scanners, using artificial intelligence to sort materials, and ballistic separation technology.
"By converting this over to optical type of scanning and sorting, we'll be able to collect more of the smaller fibers and whatnot," Dunn said. "What's really driving this, though, is the ability to recover more plastics. Over the years, we've seen additional plastic streams come into the facility, and we want to make sure that we're recovering as much of that as possible. We're going from like six optical scanners up to 17 optical scanners."
The company is adding 30,000 square feet to use for storing processed recyclables, and make more room for sorting equipment.
The facility will shut down in February for the renovations and is slated to reopen in November 2027. When it does, Communications Manager Molly Yeager said Rumpke will be able to take additional materials it doesn't currently accept.
"We don't want to give it all away right now, but one of the reasons for this renovation is so that we can continue to grow what we can recycle. The recycling stream is constantly changing. There is a growing need for more containers to be able to be recycled, and we are preparing for that future," she said.
Rumpke's first recycling center opened in St. Bernard in 1991. The current facility was built in 2013 for $32 million.
"In the 13 years this existing facility has been here, we have processed 2.3 million tons of recyclables. That's 4.6 billion pounds — that's a lot," Dunn said. "We want to make our landfills last longer by putting fewer tons in them. We want our recycling plants to recover those tons and make them marketable products to better serve our customers and to serve our region, to serve our country. So it's a wonderful thing for us."
Rumpke says recycling service won't be affected during construction.
"We'll be utilizing a facility to offload the material that we collect from our residential and commercial customers, and then reload that material onto transfer trailers, and then take it to either our Columbus, Ohio recycling facility, or to other regional recycling facilities in Indiana," said Yeager.
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