Two weeks before the Rumpke fire, Leadership Cincinnati, a program sponsored by the USA Regional Chamber of Commerce, held a tour of the Rumpke Recycling facility on Vine Street for its alumnae.  The field trip brought to light how ‘casual’ we are as home owners in our knowledge about and use of recycling.

The work environment at Rumpke consisted of scores of workers lined up along a maze of swift moving, noisy conveyor belts packed with foul smelling, damp recyclable waste. I estimated that the line-workers spent the majority of their time extracting items that were incorrectly and thoughtlessly placed in home or curbside recycle bins. Many thousands of plastic bags/wrappers, pieces of aluminum foil, polystyrene cups and assorted plastic food containers that Rumpke does not recycle litter the conveyor belts and are feverishly extracted manually into trash bins.

The conveyor belts used at Rumpke are all manufactured in Europe where recycling is taken more seriously and greater sorting of recyclables is carried out prior to pickup. Everyone in the recycling business concedes that in America the majority of waste in landfills could be recycled.

Recycling is a for-profit business. Aluminum and metal cans are the most profitable; followed by glass containers (the lids should be removed); then all types of paper; and finally plastic bottles and jugs. Plastic classification with the triangular emblem on the bottom of the container is unimportant to Rumpke.

After the Rumpke Recycling unit reopens, a tour would be eye opening. Those visitors would become more sensitive to ‘green’ recycling behaviors as it instills empathy for the ‘belt-line’ workers that staff this facility.