Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility

Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility is a recycling facility in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, operated by Sims Metal Management. As of October 2016, it is the largest commingled recycling facility in the United States and the primary recycling center in New York City. 
Construction and facilities.
The Material Recovery Facility is operated by Sims Metal Management, a large recycling company which holds a 40-year contract with the City of New York. The 11-acre property sits on the Sunset Park side of the Gowanus Bay, at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. 
It was designed by Selldorf Architects and built on the site of a former New York Police Department impound lot. The pier was raised four feet above what the city would otherwise require to be resilient against rising water levels and harsh weather. Consistent with its purpose, it was constructed using many recycled materials. The buildings are further raised above four feet of recycled glass and stone from the development of the Second Avenue Subway project while the structures themselves are largely built with recycled steel. The ropes used along the pier are selected to cultivate mussels, and three artificial reefs were installed at the end to help cultivate a habitat to attract marine life and birds. It has its own storm water management system to avoid runoff into the East River.
The campus includes a tipping building where materials arrive, the main processing building along the southern edge, storage buildings, and an administrative building. The administrative building includes an education center which includes exhibits explaining how the plant operates for student and tour groups and connects to the main processing building for public viewing via elevated pedestrian walkway.
A 160-foot 100 kW small wind turbine sits on the north corner of the property. When it was activated in January 2015, it was the city's tallest. It produces about 4% of the facility's power. 30,000 square feet of rooftop solar panels provides another 20% of daily energy.
The total cost of construction totaled $110 million, of which $60 million was subsidized by the city as part of the Bloomberg Administration's PlaNYC 2030 project. The plant opened in December 2013. At the time, Michael Kimmelman of the "New York Times" praised its design, calling it "understated, well proportioned and well planned -- elegant, actually, and not just for a garbage site" and suggested good design principles could work to help sell the public on the idea of recycling, which is necessary in order for the facility to succeed.
Activity.
The plant is New York City's primary recycling facility, and processes three-quarters of its plastic, metal, and glass. As of February 2018, it processes about 20,000 tons of material monthly, up from 15,000 tons three years earlier, with a daily processing capacity of 1,000 tons. The facility's primary purpose is to sort the materials it receives, before selling to other processors. The machinery is manufactured by the Dutch company Bollegraaf.
The material arrives in trucks, mostly hauled from barges, which reduces the mileage sanitation trucks had to travel previously. It is dumped into a pile on the main facility's floor where large items are removed manually and the rest put on conveyor belt. The line first goes through a slow shredder with large gaps which opens the bags the materials arrive in. Particular materials are pulled out of the stream using specialized machines, for example using a rotating magnetic drum to extract tin cans. Another machine grinds glass small enough to fall from the mixed stream to a dedicated one. Optical sorters identify and separate certain types of plastic and paper, with air jets passing selected items from one line to another. An eddy current separator removes most of the remaining metals before passing through a trommel at the end of the line. Human inspectors are most involved at the end of the process to correct for any mistakes the machines made. The separated materials are then collected, squeezed into blocks, and moved out of the main facility, mostly by train.
The city pays Sims to process its recycling at a rate of approximately $75 per ton of metal, glass, and plastic that comes from its sanitation trucks. When the value of the materials increases, the city receives a rebate. In 2019, Sims made nearly $25 million this way. The facility's activity and revenue are affected by local politics, such as the 1983 bottle bill and its proposed expansion, and shifting policies in China reducing the amount of foreign recycled material it would accept.