NORTH CHARLESTON — Charleston County officials cut the ribbon on a new sorting center for recycling on Tuesday, marking the end of a difficult period in which the county’s recyclables were briefly sent to a landfill and then later burned for power.
The new 82,000-square-foot Material Recovery Facility on Palmetto Commerce Parkway began processing waste last week. It includes machines that replace some of the previous hands-on labor required at the county’s old sorting facility, and can process four to five times more material.
An “optical sorter” groups plastics by shooting them off a conveyor belt with air bursts while suction cups separate different types of paper and a spinning magnet collects aluminum cans. It’s capable of processing 25 tons an hour.
Outgoing County Council Chairman Elliott Summey said the site is a long-term solution to continue the county’s “wildly popular” single-stream recycling program, which received more than 39,500 tons of material last fiscal year.
The new, 82,000-square foot Charleston County Material Recovery Facility on Palmetto Commerce Parkway has begun processing recyclables and uses an “optical sorter” that groups plastics by shooting them off a conveyor belt with air bursts while suction cups separate different types of paper and a spinning magnet collects aluminum cans. It’s capable of processing 25 tons an hour. Brad Nettles/Staff
Councilman Brantley Moody, who heads the panel’s Environmental Management Committee, said the new $30 million building and accompanying equipment offered the “highest value for the lowest cost,” though he acknowledged that recycling typically is not profitable.
Recyclable materials have faced a challenging market since China stopped importing most types of waste in 2018, but Moody said the real value is in diverting materials from Charleston County’s landfill.
Moody said the space could also accept material from neighbors, and that there is “no need to close the doors at the county lines.”
In the past several years, Charleston County had to strike deals with other counties to help process its recyclables as work on the new sorting complex was repeatedly delayed.
“Quite frankly, I hope we don’t have to go through another Herculean effort like this,” outgoing Councilman Vic Rawl said before the ribbon cutting. “With the time, effort, money, blood, sweat and tears (involved), this place ought to be paved — walls, ceilings and floor — in gold.”
Charleston County cut the ribbon on the new, 82,000-square foot Material Recovery Facility on Palmetto Commerce Parkway Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. The facility began processing recyclables last week. Brad Nettles/Staff
The new center was first approved by the county in 2013. But before construction started, the private company that operated the older Romney Street sorting building opted not to renew its contract. Charleston County then struck a deal to send its material north to Horry County while it waited for a new local site.
Groundbreaking took place on the 22-acre North Charleston site in May 2017, but six months after construction started, the builders grew concerned about the soil quality there. Eventually, 4,000 cubic yards were excavated and replaced.
In 2018, work stopped again. Moody told The Post and Courier at the time that the project was paused because the plan had been scaled back by staff, and council wanted a design change back to the original concept.
In the same year, Horry County did not renew its agreement to receive recyclables, which had cost Charleston County more than $100,000 a month in handling fees and trucking costs. Charleston County then retrofit the older machinery at the Romney Street site and sent recyclables back there.
Twice in 2019, equipment at Romney Street broke down and recyclables were sent to the landfill on Bees Ferry Road. In October of last year the county started paying Berkeley County to take its recyclables at its RePower South facility in Moncks Corner, which salvages some materials but converts others, such as plastics, into fuel pellets that are used for energy in industrial furnaces.
Without the RePower agreement “we would not have been able to continue this recycling program,” Summey said Tuesday.
Crucial to the success of the new site will be a clean stream of recyclables from residents, Moody said. Already the center has received nonrecyclable items including several knives, a garden hose and a baseball bat.
“If you treat your ‘blue bin’ like your ‘green bin,’ this will not work,” Moody said.
For more information on which types of plastic, paper, glass and metal are accepted at the new facility, residents of Charleston County can go to charlestoncounty.org/departments/environmental-management/recycle-what.php.
Reach Chloe Johnson at 843-735-9985. Follow her on Twitter @_ChloeAJ.
