St. Louis Recycling Tour Visit

Many schools across the country are participating in the First Lego League http://firstlegoleague.org/. Each year, students receive tasks from the league and they work to find a solution. A group of students from St. Louis’s Sacred Heart visited the Republic Services Recycling Facility to learn about recycling processes and will use that information to design a solution, for example, what could be done better or in what way could the process improve?

During a tour of Republic’s Recycling Facility, the students learned how recyclables are sorted, got a digital walkthrough from Tipping Floor to Bales, and afterwards, they suited up in safety gear to see the recycling facility in action! The kids were most impressed by the Eddy Current (sorting Aluminum) and the Optical Sorters (sorting plastic). The students asked many questions about problem materials and learned that plastic bags and stretch film in All-In-One Recycling systems can cause issues.