Sonoco Recycling Charlotte to Become Full-Scale Material Recovery Facility
Work is underway to transition Sonoco Recycling, Inc.'s Charlotte, N.C., USA, Recycling Center into a full-scale material recovery facility (MRF) by early summer. The $2.6 million project will result in the Charlotte center, located at 3901 Barringer Drive, becoming the third MRF owned and operated by the company in the Southeast. The others are located in Raleigh, N.C., and Columbia, S.C.
In November 2009, Sonoco Recycling completed a $2 million expansion project at the Charlotte center. The project expanded the facility's footprint by 23,500 square feet and included the installation of new commercial sorting and baling equipment. In addition, the facility's outside space was redesigned to improve traffic flow. The Charlotte center accepts and processes corrugated boxes and other grades of paper as well as plastic and other materials. It accepts curbside material delivered by the public and offers flatbed pick up of baled material, and van pick up for loose, palletized, or baled material. Sonoco, which processes and uses many of these recycled materials to produce recycled paperboard at its paper mills in the Southeast, then uses that paperboard to produce new consumer and industrial packaging, making Sonoco one of the few closed loop suppliers of packaging in the industry.
Marcy Thompson, VP and GM, Sonoco Recycling, noted that "at Charlotte we're adding high-tech equipment that will allow us to further grow our capacity and more effectively sort residential single-stream waste. Additions will include new sorting screens, separators, high-speed conveyors, steel disks, and other state-of-the-art equipment. While Mecklenburg County is already served by a materials recovery facility, the area needs a second MRF because of the tremendous growth throughout the region. These upgrades, along with the upgrades we completed last fall, better position us to meet the recycling needs of this growing market."
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