Houston-based
WM, formerly known as Waste Management, on Tuesday announced plans for a $38 million rebuild of its recycling facility in Germantown, including the addition of “state-of-the-art” technology for sorting residential and commercial recyclables.
The facility, located at W132 N10487 Grant Drive, serves all of Wisconsin and is one of the largest recycling processing facilities in the state.
WM said the facility rebuilding project is expected to enable it to process recyclables more efficiently and produce a higher quality product for manufacturers that use recovered material as feedstock.
“We’ll be deploying the most technically advanced optical sorting systems, and more of them than we have now,” said WM spokeswoman Lynn Morgan. “The optical sorters essentially scan recyclables to identify their composition and sort them by type. The newer systems are more flexible, sophisticated and accurate.”
The facility will have recycling capacity of over 200,000 tons per year. The rebuilt plant is expected to enable the recovery of more recyclables at higher quality so manufacturers can turn recycled materials into new products and packaging, WM said in a news release.
The rebuild of the facility is slated to start in May, with completion expected in late December. WM has arranged to have recyclables processed at other recycling plants in the region in the interim.
After the rebuild, the facility will have fewer workers overall, and more workers in skilled positions as opposed to manual sorting roles, Morgan said.
The Germantown recycling project is among WM’s recently announced $1 billion in investments in recycling infrastructure expected between 2022 and 2025. WM aims to increase the recovery of materials companywide by 60% to 25 million tons by 2030.
“Sustainability is WM’s core business, and recycling is at its heart,” said WM upper Midwest area vice president Frank Fello. “This investment demonstrates that our commitment to growing recycling in the state of Wisconsin is stronger than ever.”
