I LEARNED THE TRUTH ABOUT RECYCLING

Today we're going to find out what really happens to your streetside recycling bins. We have our aluminum cans. We have cardboard, milk jugs, and even Starbucks coffee cups. We're going to see where it all goes and where it all ends up. I've always been curious where the stuff I throw into my streetside recycling container actually

goes. So, I decided to follow the trucks here to my very own WM recycling facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. They've been kind enough to give us a tour of the monster handling all of our curbside recycling bins. And it is indeed a monster. One machine eats it all. And he is hungry.

WM recycles about 17 million tons of material every year. And this beast alone, this single machine, consumes about 450 tons per day. And today, this day, we get to see how it all works. From pneumatic optical laser sorters to magnetical force fields to giant rubber-fingered tumblers, all working together to sort our recyclables. It's like the

Hogwarts sorting hat, but instead of Hufflepuff and Slytherin, it's all paper stuff and scrap tin. Sorry. There are more than 2 mi worth of conveyor belts built into the machine, and everything has to run at the same time. It's like a giant organism chewing up throwaway cardboard boxes and aluminum cans and excreting solid bricks of individualized commodities

ready to be recirculated back into society as new products. But how, you ask? Well, it all starts here on the tipping floor where the waste collection trucks come to tip out their load right onto the concrete. This is where all the big trucks come and drop off the recycling bins that they've collected off the streetside curb. The big tractors can come in and mix it all