LEXINGTON, Ky. (ABC 36 NEWS NOW) — The Lexington Recycling Center was shut down for ten days while a new piece of equipment was being installed, and infrastructure was being upgraded. “We recover recyclable materials here and we package them and bale them up for shipment to our buyers,” Julie Hatter with the Materials Recovery Facility said. Both the baler and the tent cover were replaced, and they both serve very important roles in the recycling process. The tent cover is where the items are first dumped. “We keep our materials dry before they come into the facility because that wet material can clog our equipment and decrease our runtime,” Hatter said. The baler is the last step in the process. “The baler essentially compacts those materials,” she said. “The way we transport them is by putting them into bales and then loading the bales on the semi-trucks.” These bales head to all different locations and serve all different types of purposes “We have different markets, so we have plastics, and we have our metals and our fiber markets,” Hatter said. “Our fiber markets are buying our materials to put into paper mills and cardboard.” Plastics and metals also get sold and repurposed into items like cans, glass bottles and even socks. Not all items can be recycled. “We see a lot of things that should not be here,” she said. “We see car batteries, we see car parts, we see bags.” Plastic bags are hand-picked on the conveyor belt to be thrown away, a tedious process for workers. They also have the help of technology to sort the tons of recyclables that come through the facility. “I encourage people to recycle, it’s a great thing and it’s not going away,” Hatter said. “This is something that we are going to continue to improve and invest in and it’s good for our environment and good for our economy.” Categories: Featured, Local News, News Tags: baler, conveyor belt, fiber market, Lexington Recycling Center, plastic, recycle, tent cover