Waste Management Celebrates Grand Opening of Single Stream Recycling Facility

Arizona Ecocenter Showcases State of the Art Recycling Technology

Waste Management announced today that the Arizona Community Ecocenter in Surprise, Ariz. is now operational. The state-of-the-art single stream recycling facility is Arizona’s most advance, featuring the latest in technology. In celebration of its new facility, Waste Management will roll out the “green carpet” for a grand opening event on Tuesday, February 22 from 11am-1pm at 19401 W. Deer Valley Road in Surprise. The event is open to the public and will include facility tours, recycle fashion show, remarks from respected community leaders and more.

The 65,000 square-foot facility has the capacity to process more than 10,000 tons of material per month—that is nearly 2.5 times the processing capacity of Waste Management’s previous facility on Madison Street, which recently closed its doors. The facility cost more than $20 million to build and will create 30-40 permanent jobs.

“Waste Management’s objective is to extract more value from the materials we manage,” said Waste Management senior vice president Duane Woods. “The Arizona Community Ecocenter will help us reach our goal by making the recycling process more efficient.”

Technology was a critical component in the development of the Arizona Community Ecocenter. Advanced recycling sorting technology including magnets, screens, optical scanners, and eddy currents are in use, creating an automated system that is quicker and much more efficient.

“We are constantly striving to optimize our efficiency by utilizing advances in recycling technology” said Waste Management Recycle America president Pat DeRueda. “This facility showcases the latest single stream recycling equipment, which will ultimately allow us to offer more recycling programs to our customers.”

Waste Management hopes to achieve LEED Silver status, which is a prominent green-building award given out by the US Green Building Council. Many environmental considerations were made during the building process, including the installation of translucent window panels to allow for natural light, solar water heater panels, and low-water use plumbing fixtures.

About Waste Management

Waste management and its 980 Arizona employees provide waste and recycling services to nearly 500,000 customers throughout Arizona. For more information, go to www.wmofarizona.com.

Waste Management, based in Houston, Texas, is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services in North America. Our subsidiaries provide collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. We are also the largest recycler in North America and a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States. Our customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America. To learn more visit www.wm.com or www.thinkgreen.com.

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