An Eye-Opening Tour of the Davis Street Transfer Station – Student Play by Play

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*Student Blog* 

When we arrived we all gathered and put on safety vests along with goggles and hard hats. Once everyone had their safety materials on we walked over to a trash pit where trucks delivered and separated trash. We learned that the pit was separated, one side was a commercial waste while one side was a residential waste. We stud in the pit observing and learned that some of the waste that comes into the pit are things like cardboard, textiles, and although it should not be in the pit the majority of the trash was food.

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After seeing the pit we walked downstairs to go outside and saw that waste management separates their trash into different sections. We saw piles of the waste of things such as cardboard, styrofoam, and wood. Another pile consisted of things like plants, they added anything that was compostable. The last pile was the pit itself where they had commercial and residential waste.

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The next step on our tour was in the Office/control room in the middle of a building of machines. There, she explained the separation of woods, metals, and cardboard on a conveyor belt. At this Waste Management ( Davis Street Transfer Station) they recycled those materials to send them to other places, which allows people to reuse them. She took us to where they began the process of doing that; separating bigger items. There were two conveyor belts, both had shoots that were attached to their sides with a color code. There was red, green, and black. She explained to us that usually there are workers between each shoot that are taking the materials off the belt (Such diligent work, I got a lot of respect because that much be really hard). Also that there were two shifts 4am-12pm and 1pm-9pm (I could never). We went outside and we saw the different wood chips that they make.

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The tour was actually so cool. I always see these wood chips thinking they were bad because they are dyed weird colors, but she told us that they were made up of all natural dyes. 

Thank you Davis Street Transfer Station for letting us see your facility!


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