Closing the loop: Where do your items go from here?

If you’ve brought items to the semi-annual Recycling Clean Out days at City Hall every spring and fall, you might wonder what happens to the materials after you unload them, and what happens to other recyclables collected door-to-door or at drop-off centers.

Generally speaking, recycled goods are commodities that are bought and sold in the process of being remade into new items. The first step for most collected goods is a recovery facility where items are sorted according to recycled content and prepared for resale to a manufacturer.

When companies buy recycled goods to use in the manufacturing process, it strengthens the markets for recycled materials as well as providing environmental benefits over using virgin natural resources. And when consumers buy products made with recycled content, they “close the loop” to keep markets for recycled materials viable.

Goods collected at Forest Hills Clean Out days are immediately sorted on site and sent to the vendor or processor responsible for that category. Items fall into three categories:

Recycled: melted down or reprocessed to make into new products.
Safely disposed: sent to a licensed processing facility. This includes batteries, medications, and similar items.

The City provides the collection service at no cost to residents, although in some instances Forest Hills pays recycling vendors because the recycling companies cannot always depend upon the yield of the goods to cover their expenses.

Here’s who handles some of the materials you bring to Recycling Clean Out days.

Scrap metal

College Hunks Hauling Junk collects scrap metal and provides the scrap metal containers, as well as the majority of the muscle/hired hands, for the day. Joe Cacchiola, director of sales and marketing for Nashville region, said the metal they collect is sold by the pound to one of several local scrap yards that College Hunks uses, where it is sorted, melted, and sold as raw material for reuse.

“We are a green company, LEED certified. Our goal is to keep materials out of the landfill,” Joe said. “The best thing residents can do to have a positive impact is to continue bringing as much as possible on collection days.”

College Hunks does not charge the City for its services on Recycling Clean Out days.

Shredded documents

Shred on the Run, a Nashville-based family owned company, collects documents and shreds them onsite via its mobile shred trucks. The shredded material is sent to a paper mill where the paper is recycled and made into commercial-quality toilet paper and paper towels.

“Shredding is an important way for residents to protect their identity,” Roy Coggins, owner of Shred on the Run, said. “Anything that has your social security number, credit card information, even an NES bill, can be used to get personal information about you and use it against you.”

Shred on the Run charges the City a small fee to cover the cost of providing a truck and worker on site.

Mattresses

When you donate used mattresses and box springs, they are taken to the warehouse of Spring Back Mattress Recycling for processing by a workforce composed primarily of men who need a fresh start.

Spring Back, which began in 2010 as a project of Belmont University students, looks at mattress recycling as a means of achieving a triple benefit: serving people in need, renewing the planet, and sustainably earning a profit.

The company’s goals are to offer disenfranchised men transitional earned-income employment opportunities while creating a recycling alternative to landfilling mattresses and box springs. It serves men formerly incarcerated, in recovery, homeless veterans, and other groups in need of a second chance.

Workers at Spring Back are trained to separate the metal, fiber, and wood in mattresses and box springs, and each type of material is sent for recycling.

Recycling Clean Out Day

Prepare your items

Accepted Items

Where do your items go from here?