Mecklenburg County is now accepting more recyclables curbside

CHARLOTTE — If you curbside recycle in Mecklenburg County, your items go to the Amble Drive MRF. It just went through a major upgrade and is now one of the most up-to-date and efficient recycling facilities in the country.

Amble Drive MRF is now one of the most up-to-date and efficient recycling facilities in the country.

“We have replaced all of the recycling equipment in our plant, every bit of it down to the last conveyor belt,” said Jeff Smithberger, director of Mecklenburg County Solid Waste.

The $24 million project means the facility now has 16 optical sorters, he said. Most of the equipment was manufactured in the Netherlands.

“We were still in the business of sorting things by hand,” he said. “We’ve moved to a more mechanized equipment type here, and that makes us much, much more efficient, more cost-effective, and able to recycle more things and do those more things more quickly.”

The revamped facility means the county now has the machinery and the space necessary to accept more items curbside.

The county is now accepting new recyclables including plastic fruit bins, fast food cups, and takeout containers. But the key is they must be clean.

“If they’re leftover with last night’s lasagna from the nice dinner that you had somewhere, no, we still need that cleaned out,” he said.

Before these changes, Smithberger says about 25% of the stuff he gets curbside should have never made it into the bin. The challenge remains.

Just last week, someone tried to recycle a transmission.

He hopes people will respect the process and take the time to learn what can be recycled, so this new machinery lasts for years to come.

“This is a state-of-the-art facility,” he said. “There’s not many communities in the United States that have these.”

New items that can be recycled curbside:

Paper cups, including coffee and fast-food beverage cups
Plastic cups (no straws)
Polypropylene (PP) containers, including yogurt cups and similar food containers
Clear plastic food containers (PET), such as containers used for produce, bakery items and prepared foods
Clean takeout containers made from accepted recyclable material

Full list can be found here.:

Communities served by the Amble Drive MRF: