A 2022 fire fueled an overhaul to Republic Services’ Anaheim Recycling Center, which has reopened bigger and better, officials say.

With a damaged facility closed by fire, the waste and recycling company took the opportunity to rebuild with twice as much capacity. The latest in efficient technology for processing recyclable materials was installed, said General Manager James Castro.

The new 280,000-square-foot facility can now process more than 185,000 tons of recyclable material in a year.

Where before about 50 tons could be sorted in an hour, now the system can breeze through 100 tons, Castro said, adding, “This system was built so we can accommodate more inbound tons.”

Employees pre-sort the material coming into the facility, a first line of defense pulling out items that can’t be recycled and could damage the sorting machinery, such as hoses, textiles, electrical cords and heavy pieces of metal.

Then the new sorting system goes to work, using optical scanners (there are more now), screens and even puffs of air to separate the plastic, paper and other materials for recycling. There are now artificial intelligence units that are learning the kind of waste that comes in and will improve the system’s efficiency over time, Castro said.

Employees do a last check at the end, plucking out any unrecyclable or soiled materials that get through.

And if there is a malfunction of one of the sorting lines, Castro said the system is now set up better, so it can be isolated and worked on without affecting as much of the output.

“We have some redundancy built in now,” he said.

The waste comes from the 26 communities that Republic Services collects from in Orange and Los Angeles counties —  produced by more than 440,000 homes, company officials said. There is also a trash waystation at the Anaheim facility that was not damaged by the fire.

In the three years since the fire, Republic Services was leaning on a smaller facility in Huntington Beach and also contracting out some of the work, Castro said about the excitement of having the Anaheim location up and running again. “We were giving it to our competitors to process for us.”

The crews were able to return to the Anaheim location in December and started dialing in the new system, which is now in full swing with crews working 24 hours a day, Mondays through Sundays, Castro said. It employs about 180 people.

“It is very durable, the employees love it,” Castro said. “By all indications, it is going great.”

They also built in space for school groups and other visitors to tour and watch how recyclables are separated and sent off to become new things.

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