🇺🇸 CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A major recycling facility in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, has reopened following a $24 million upgrade that replaced its processing equipment and expanded its automated sorting capacity.

The Amble Drive Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) now operates with 16 optical sorters as part of a completely upgraded processing system. The project included the replacement of the facility’s conveyors and other core processing equipment.

The project was delivered by Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, which supplied and integrated the new processing equipment. Most of the equipment was manufactured in the Netherlands.

PET recovery is a key focus of the upgrade. Two of the 16 optical sorters are dedicated to PET, allowing the facility to separate PET bottles from other PET packaging, including thermoforms and pigmented or opaque material.

The upgraded system is expected to recover an additional 5.6 million pounds of PET annually, equivalent to about 2,540 metric tonnes.

Expanded material recovery

The facility can also process a broader range of recyclable materials than before, including plastic cups, polypropylene containers, clear PET food containers and clean takeout containers.

The upgrade is intended to increase the amount of recyclable material recovered from Mecklenburg County’s residential recycling stream, while improving separation and reducing reliance on manual sorting.

The Amble Drive facility is owned by Mecklenburg County and operated by Circular Services. The project represents a major modernization of the existing MRF rather than construction of a new facility.

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