How2Day: Recycling Plants in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's recycling plants keep materials such as metals, glass and organic waste from going into landfills. Yasuhide Fumoto/Photodisc/Getty Images
Recycling is an easy way for individuals and businesses to help the environment, reduce waste and conserve natural resources. Commonly recycled household and office items include paper, plastic, glass, aluminum and steel. Materials such as electronics, batteries, light bulbs, tires, motor oil and household chemicals can be hazardous and require special recycling processes. You can even recycle compostable yard and kitchen waste, construction materials such as bricks and drywall, bicycles, mattresses and eyeglasses. There are several plants in the Pennsylvania that offer recycling services.

Pittsburgh's Castriota Metals and Recycling hauls and recycles metals such as iron, aluminum, steel, brass, tin, zinc and copper. The company will accept car parts, scrap metals, building materials, chips and machine turnings. Ineligible materials include flammable or radioactive metals, metals containing freon or mercury, paint cans, fire extinguishers or other sealed containers. According to the company's website, recycling metals through "the scrap industry cuts down landfill usage and depletion of natural resources."

Pittsburgh's AgRecycle provides collection and drop-off locations for compostable organic waste, including food scraps, yard debris, manure, untreated wood and corrugated cardboard. The company recycles these collected materials into compost to be used for soil amendment. According to the company's website, if just 10 percent of the 765,000 tons of daily waste generated in the United States was composted, the reduction in carbon emissions would be equivalent to taking 6.8 million cars off the roads.

INMETCO, located in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, recycles batteries. The company specializes in "thermal recovery" for large and small nickel cadmium batteries, but also accepts nickel-iron, nickel metal hydride, lithium ion and mercury-free zinc carbon batteries. Large cell batteries are used for backup power, and small-cell batteries are commonly found in power tools, appliances and medical equipment. According to the company's website, recycled battery elements are used to make new batteries, to manufacture stainless steel and in wastewater treatment plants.

Pittsburgh's eLoop llc provides recycling and refurbishing services for electronics such as computers, CRT monitors, cell phones, televisions and other devices that have outlived their technological lifespan. The company's website notes that electronics often "contain hazardous chemicals such as lead, cadmium, and mercury, which can seep into the ground and cause contamination if disposed of in a landfill." When possible, devices are refurbished for sale.

Atlantic Lamp Recycling, located in Wayne, Pennsylvania, recycles materials such as lamps, ballasts, PCB electrical equipment, batteries, asbestos, transformers, computers, electronics and hazardous electrical waste. Materials such as lamps and light bulbs can contain hazardous elements such as mercury, PCBs, oils and lead. If these materials are left in landfill, dangerous toxins can leach into ground and water supplies.

Recycled tires have a variety of uses, all of which are better than sitting in the dump. old tires in a pile of garbage image by Alex Motrenko from Fotolia.com
Liberty Tire Recycling, located in Braddock, Pennsylvania, uses size-reduction techniques to recycle scrap tires. These rubber crumbs can then be reused as molded rubber products, adhesives, substitutes for stone aggregates, fuel for kilns or power plants, or landscaping projects such as mulch, according to the company's website. Liberty Tire Recycling collects tires from pick-up locations across the country, as well as removing more than 40 million scrap tires from landfills.

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