New Braunfels recycling efforts expand to meet growth of community From the cover
What you need to know
Two-minute impact
New Braunfels has a landfill, but not a recycling plant. The city’s new state-of-the-art facility will be equipped with 16 optical sorters—devices that use cameras and lasers to identify and properly sort materials discarded at the center. The facility will help sort the thousands of tons of materials recycled by New Braunfels every year. “We see the new [materials recovery facility] as being beneficial to everyone from a waste manage- ment perspective,” Doughty said.
Solid Waste Manager Elizabeth Tyler said. After completing its pickup route, the New Braunfels recycling trucks will unload all of the collected material at the recovery facility, where it will be sent on a large conveyor belt to a presort room where sorters will work by hand to remove items that should not have been disposed of in blue bins. Materials such as paper, cans and bottles will then be separated before being run through an Eddy current, an electric current that pulls materials with aluminum o the conveyor belt and into a metal-only stream. The sorted materials will then be compacted into bales and shipped around the county to get a second life by being made into a new material, such as carpet, ooring and apparel, according to WM.
Since 2007, the city’s recycling trucks have been driving to material recovery facilities in San Antonio multiple times a day. The city spent nearly $245,000 on fuel in its recycling division in 2022; it anticipates the new local recovery facility will improve the e ciency of its recycling operations and the safety of its drivers. Construction on the WM Mesquite Creek materials recovery facility in New Braunfels is slated to begin by the end of the year and be completed around the end of 2024. “The area continues to grow, and as WM continues to build our services across the area, [New Braunfels] just looked like it was going to be a very good t, and the city has been very receptive,” WM Director of Public A airs Lisa Doughty said. Located near the Mesquite Creek Land ll and Gas-To-Energy Plant on Kohlenberg Road, the development will be a “game changer,” city
New Braunfels recycling statistics
$12.8M 30.31% 3,000 4,771 735
fiscal year 2022-23 operating budget for solid waste and recycling department of recycling considered contaminated over the past five years tons of green waste (plant trimmings, branches, etc.) collected in 2022 tons of recycling disposed of in September 2023 tons of recycling diverted from the landfill in September 2023
The development will also feature an education center, o ce space and a community drop-o center.
WM Mesquite Creek Materials Recovery Facility in New Braunfels Address: 801 Kohlenberg Road, New Braunfels Timeline: fourth quarter 2023- fourth quarter 2024
1101
WM MESQUITE CREEK MATERIALS RECOVERY FACILITY
Size: 100,000 square feet
Cost: $48 million
SOURCE: WMCOMMUNITY IMPACT
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SOURCES: CITY OF NEW BRAUNFELS, WM/COMMUNITY IMPACT
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COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM
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