New recycling machine makes the job more efficient
Of all the stuff you throw into your curbside recycling bin, a majority from the Wasatch Front ends up at Rocky Mountain Recycling. The South Salt Lake business expanded its operation, and Tuesday fired up some new state-of-the-art equipment. 
Rocky Mountain Recycling processes more than 50,000 tons of recyclable materials each month. All kinds of paper, cardboard, plastics, aluminum and other metals.
The brand new, $7 million single-stream sort system takes all of the recyclables from one big pile, and sends them into the bins where they belong.
John Sasine, president of Rocky Mountain Recycling, says the upgrade was critical to keep up with the expanding recycling market.
"This technology is 10 or 15 years better than the old system that we had," Sasine said.
Three-foot wide conveyor belts carry the pop bottles, beer cans, cardboard boxes and newspaper through a series of screens and sorters. Screens first pull the cardboard away; the conveyor separates different kinds of papers: shredded, newsprint and magazine.
Farther along the process, milk jugs are spotted by an optical lens, and blasted into a bin. Later, a magnet plucks metal cans from the stream.
It's efficient and effective for such a high volume of recyclables, but the company still needs people to sort the items the machine misses.
"They make sure there are no containers in with the paper and no paper in with the containers," Sasine said.
If the materials mix, Rocky Mountain Recycling cannot sell the finished bales on the market. "Contaminated" bales end up in the landfill because the paper producers and metal smelters can't use them.
"They have some really strict guidelines for what they can accept, because they have to turn it into a product that can be introduced back into manufacturing. If it's contaminated, it's unusable to them. That's why a machine like this is critical," Sasine said.
The owner says this expansion almost fell through before it even started. An out-of-state bank pulled the plug on the business loan last October, but First Utah Bank came through with the loan at a critical time.
In this economy, Sasine is very grateful that his local lender came through with the loan.
Original article by KSL can be found here.
Rocky Mountain Recycling: Wrap it Up
Since adding more plastic to the nation's trash heap is unsustainable, Rocky Mountain Recycling (RMR) put its collective heads together to find a solution. The resulting trademarked Super Sandwich Bale™ process broadened the company's reach across the US and changed recycling.
"Our target customers are the largest retailers in the country," said John Sasine, president. "Enthusiasm for the program has been so high that companies asked us to start immediately after a presentation." Based in Salt Lake City, RMR operates throughout the Western US running recycling programs for municipal, industrial, and commercial customers. It is best known for the Super Sandwich Bale, created several years ago when Wal-Mart was looking to collect and recycle hangers and shrink wrap accumulating in their back rooms.
The Super Sandwich Bale™ is a simple solution no one previously thought of. Once plastic waste is collected and staged to 25 to 30 cubic yards, it is added to a baler used to recycle cardboard in an entirely inedible recipe. First, add a bottom layer of cardboard, then add the filler layer of shrink wrap and hangers, plastic bottles and cans, and office paper and crush it into a two- to three-foot high midsection. Top it off with cardboard and serve to a material recovery facility (MRF).
Who is Rocky Mountain Recycling
Rocky Mountain Recycling (RMR) is a leading-edge recycling company providing a range of innovative services to commercial and industrial companies throughout the United States. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, RMR sells, services and finances equipment for customers who are ready to take advantage of today's recycling advances.
- Intermountain West largest paper recycler.
- Operation in 11 states.
- Over 200 Employees.
- Recycling over 50,000 tons per month.
- Media spotlight: New York Times, CNN Money, Waste News, Wal-Mart, internal news and more.
Super Sandwich Bale™ - Utah man's idea nets wholesale recycling
Article in Deseret News - 04/22/08
Let us now consider the plastic hanger.
Wal-Mart uses millions of them a year - uses them just once and then has to figure out what to do with them, along with the mountains of plastic film, shrink-wrap, shipping pallets, cardboard boxes, trailer tags and other behind-the-scenes detritus of the American shopping experience. Not too long ago, Wal-Mart employees just threw most of that stuff away.
And then along came Jeff Ashby, a hyperactive man who in the early 1990s drove a garbage truck and is now national accounts manager for Rocky Mountain Recycling in Salt Lake City.
Ashby has a neighbor who is a Wal-Mart employee whose job it is to take the filmy plastic wrap off each piece of clothing that comes into the store. One day a few years ago, the neighbor wondered aloud why all that plastic was thrown away rather than recycled. So Ashby came up with an idea he calls the "Super Sandwich Bale™," a seemingly obvious innovation whose patent paperwork is a foot thick.
For nearly two years now, Wal-Marts everywhere in America have been using the Super Sandwich Bale™ - which means they now recycle more than 25 percent of what once was tossed into the trash compactor, Ashby said. Plastic clothes hangers currently account for a third of this volume.