Materials recovery facility

In the waste management industry, a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF -- pronounced "murf") is a specialized plant that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers. Generally, there are two types - clean and dirty MRF's.

A clean MRF accepts recyclable materials that have been source separated from municipal solid waste generated by either residential or commercial sources. There are a variety of clean MRF's. The most common currently are 2-stream MRF's, where source-separated recyclables are delivered in the form of a mixed food and beverage container stream (typically glass, steel, aluminum, PET [No.1] and HDPE [No.2] plastics) and a mixed paper stream. The composition of the mixed paper stream can vary considerably, depending on the marketing arrangements that are available to the MRF operator. A typical mixed paper stream will consist of old newspapers with their inserts, old magazines and kraft (brown) paper bags. Some MRF's are able to handle a mixed paper stream consisting of a wider variety of paper types that includes old corrugated, junk mail, telephone books and even paperboard.

A dirty MRF accepts a mixed solid waste stream and then proceeds to separate out designated recyclable materials through a combination of manual and machine-assisted sorting. The sorted recyclable materials may undergo further processing required to meet technical specifications established by end-markets while the balance of the mixed waste stream is sent to a disposal facility such as a landfill.

The percentage of residuals (unrecoverable recyclable or non-program materials) from a properly operated clean MRF supported by an effective public outreach and education program should not exceed 10% by weight of the total delivered stream and in many cases it can be significantly below 5%. A dirty MRF recovers between five and 45 percent of the incoming material as recyclables, then the remainder is landfilled or otherwise disposed.

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