SALT LAKE CITY — After all the work Santa Claus put into giving children what they want, Larry Gibbons and his team pick up where the elves left off.
"We get a lot of boxes as you can imagine,” said Gibbons, “the wrapping paper, the plastic, all of those things. We see a huge increase in all of that."
Gibbons is a manager with Rocky Mountain Recycling in Salt Lake City.
This time of year, Gibbons says he sees about a 20-percent increase in the amount of paper that comes through his facility.
As soon as a truck dumps off whatever people put into their recycling bins, it goes through a conveyer belt system to be sorted.
Workers sift through material to remove plastic, metal, or anything else that isn’t paper. These workers pick through roughly four items a second.
"They're amazing,” said Gibbons. “They do a great job. If there is any contamination, they spot it and they will pull it out so we're sure we're sending out the best product we can."
These workers have a 98-percent accuracy rate to keep the paper as pure as possible.
From there, the paper goes into another chute where it's tied together. Then it comes out in 1-ton bails, ready to be shipped to the paper mills instead of a landfill.
"It'll be shipped to a paper mill, where yesterday's wrapping paper will be turned back into newspaper or even next year's wrapping paper," said Gibbons. "It lets us know we're taking care of today, so we'll have a have a beautiful environment tomorrow.”
E-mail: acabrero@ksl.com, Twitter: ksl_alexcabrero