A tour of a Hartford recycling facility

By Bob Bumcrot

As Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes might ask… have you ever wondered what happens to all the trash after it leaves Norfolk’s transfer station? It is trucked, along with the waste from 70 towns in Connecticut, to a processing facility in Hartford.  Built in 1988 for the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority and operated under contract with Covanta Energy, the facility processes up to 3,000 tons of garbage per day, converting it to recyclable materials, energy and ash.

First stop on a recent tour was an entrance ‘sculpture,’ consisting of one ton of waste, including tires, CDs, cans, bottles, newspaper, and toys. This artistic creation was named the Temple of Trash. The plant itself is entered through two doors that help keep Willie, the rat-catching cat, inside. Here, for 40 hours each week, a nonstop parade of trucks, (some 53 feet long), disgorge their contents onto an area larger than a football field. The ceiling is 40 feet high, with roaring exhaust fans. The sorting process begins with giant loaders rushing around, depositing their materials onto conveyor belts.

Working from inside sealed booths for safety reasons, technicians maneuver mechanical pickers. Pressure cans explode inside giant shredders. Paper and corrugated cardboard are rearranged into one-ton bales, which are then sold. Iron and steel products are separated magnetically, and also baled. Aluminum is removed by an electric field. Glass is reduced to quarter-inch crushed pieces called cullet, which can later be used in the manufacture of colored glass containers. Plastics of type one or two can be reused, but types three through seven are removed for burning.

Under the watchful eye of a control-room technician, the waste material goes through tilted shredders, which resemble giant cheese graters. The technician can quickly shut down a line, should an $80,000 belt get punctured by an errant wood beam, or by a metal bar, and allow the maintenance staff to apply a patch.

The waste is fed into enormous furnaces, which are neither gas nor oil-fired. The garbage itself is the fuel, making this facility the only Refuse-Derived Fuel plant in Connecticut. The heat from burning makes steam, which in turn propels turbine-driven generators. “At full capacity, we make enough electricity for 70,000 homes,” according to the tour guide, Kirsten Martin. Resulting gasses are cleaned up by passing through a scrubber and bag filters, before going up the tall stack. Odors are monitored via ducts, fans and a sensing system.

Finally, the bottom ash, unusable due to trace contamination, is trucked out to the landfill. This towering hill is a major bird habitat, and is due to close within two years. The location of a new ash-only fill will soon be announced. It is standard procedure that such a site be located near water, such as the Connecticut River, to enable quick detection of groundwater leaks.