Cities 101: How Does NYC Recycle? Video Look Inside Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility

Ever wonder where your recyclables go after you sort them? Well, 18,000 tons of residential metal, glass, plastic and paper in New York City go through the Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility every month. Located on the 30th Street pier in Brooklyn, the facility is operated by Sims Metal Management, the company that processes all of the city’s recyclables collected by the Department of Sanitation. It’s a state-of-the-art plant, both for the processing technology inside and for its architecture, which has won New York City’s Award for Excellence in Design. Hurricane Sandy hit in the middle of construction, but the facility was untouched thanks to sustainability initiatives that were already in the design.

We previously curated 10 fun facts about Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility facility that we learned on tour there last summer (rock from the Second Avenue Subway excavation holds up the building!), but today we wanted to share videos made by Cool Hunting and Ars Technica that show the recycling process at work.