Rumpke designs the blueprint for the MRF of the future

When Rumpke Waste & Recycling broke ground on its Columbus Recycling & Resource Center, the goal wasn't just to build another high-throughput MRF. It was to create a facility that could evolve alongside an ever-shifting recycling landscape. From the building's core infrastructure to its advanced sorting systems, community engagement tools, and career development resources, every element was designed to meet today's needs and tomorrow's unknowns.

"I didn't want it to be for this year, next year, or five years from now. I wanted it to be available 20 years from now," says Jeff Snyder, senior vice president of recycling and sustainability at Rumpke. "When we designed this facility, I designed it with an extra bunker, an extra conveyor. So if we want to add a commodity in the future, I can do that very easily without changing the entire infrastructure inside the building."

Scalable by design

The $100 million Columbus facility occupies 226,000 square feet and, according to Snyder, is the most technologically advanced in Rumpke's network. It processes up to 250,000 tons of recyclables annually from nearly 50 counties and operates two shifts each day, with continuous housekeeping and maintenance coverage.

One of the most forward-thinking features is the installation of overhead cranes. These allow the team to move in or swap out sorting equipment as needed without disrupting the building's layout. That level of modularity, combined with built-in spare conveyors and bunkers, ensures that the facility can remain operational and effective even as packaging types, contaminants, and customer expectations evolve.

Rumpke also took the opportunity to eliminate rotating screens. "We replaced them with ballistics, which are ellipticals and optics," says Snyder. "We're not going into these screens and [removing debris] of the shafts and [dealing with] all the maintenance and all the safety issues that go with that."

AI, X-ray, and zero manual sorting of plastics

At the heart of the Columbus system is a layered approach to automation. The facility incorporates 19 optical sorters, four ballistic separators, and a sophisticated artificial intelligence backbone that enables high-purity sorting with fewer people on the line.

"There's not one single person sorting plastics," says Snyder. "It's as clean as you could possibly imagine, and it's because of the optics and the AI capability."

AI is also used to monitor inbound and outbound materials. "If AI can tell us what's coming in, and then we know what's leaving . . . the difference is what we've recycled," Snyder explains. That data informs recovery rates and can be used to fine-tune technology and process decisions.

While the average MRF achieves processing efficiencies in the mid-80 percent range, Rumpke achieves a very high recovery rate for recyclables. "We are over a 98 percent recovery rate on what we tell people to put in the recycling bin," says Snyder.

The auditing floor and Sampling Station

Unique among North American MRFs, the Columbus facility includes a second tipping floor for customer-facing material audits and a third tipping floor dedicated to clean commodities. This second tipping floor supports load sampling for cities, counties, and businesses. This process is supported by what Rumpke calls the Sampling Station, a mini-MRF designed specifically to evaluate customer loads without interrupting full-scale operations.

"If the city of Columbus comes to me and says, ‘Hey, I'd like to know what our contamination rate is,' I can take samples of their material, run it through this side of the process, and tell them everything that's in their stream," says Snyder. Clients can make changes to their collection programs and return months later to compare results.

Education, R&D, and the Career Development Center

Public trust and transparency are foundational to Rumpke's approach. At the Columbus site, that means more than tours. It means immersion. From exhibit design to messaging, the team at Rumpke wanted to ensure that visitors could see recycling in action and understand their role in the system.

"We designed a 3,000-square-foot education centre," says Amanda Pratt, senior vice president of communications at Rumpke. Visitors start with an interactive supermarket where they "shop" for household goods and learn whether each item is recyclable. They then move through hands-on exhibits, view full-size bales, and see how recovered materials become new products.

"We want it to be a destination," Snyder adds. The site hosts thousands of visitors each year, including school groups, residents, manufacturers, researchers, and industry professionals. From exhibit design to messaging, the team at Rumpke wanted to ensure that everyone could see recycling in action and understand their role in the system.

On the workforce side, Rumpke's on-site Career Development Center offers free commercial driver's license training, customer service workshops, sales training, and leadership development.

The company also provides space for university engagement, including a dedicated R&D room that was initially developed in partnership with Ohio State University. Today, multiple universities make use of the space for learning sessions, school projects, and even live sustainability courses. While some collaborations are still in the early stages, Rumpke has worked with Ohio State's Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence (CDME) engineers to explore AI- and robotics-based solutions for material recognition and sorting challenges.

Circularity and regional impact

With more than 80 percent of outbound materials staying in Ohio and 100 percent flowing to end users within a 250-mile radius, the Columbus facility plays a central role in advancing a Midwestern circular economy. Rumpke partners with companies like Vertex and other regional manufacturers and end markets to close the loop on common materials, including PET bottles, clamshells, milk jugs, and corrugated cardboard.

"Take a milk jug that is purchased at Kroger in the city of Columbus," says Snyder. "It comes to us, we sort it, we bail it, we send it to Vertex in Columbus. They clean it, extrude it back into a pellet right here in the city, and it's made back into a new product right here. So it never leaves the city."

This proximity reduces transportation-related emissions and supports a regional ecosystem of recyclers, converters, and brand owners. "We're very fortunate in the Midwest to have multiple end markets for the materials that we sort," he says.

Built for performance, backed by culture

For a facility this complex to run smoothly, long-term innovation has to be balanced with day-to-day performance. That's where Rumpke's culture comes in.

"We make sure that we have the right metrics in place to measure our progress, or identify opportunities and things that we need to improve upon," says Pratt. "Those are the key drivers for success: to constantly be the best for each other, for our customers, and for the environment."

That culture of accountability and shared purpose is part of the reason why the company continues to earn national recognition. Rumpke has been named a U.S. Best Managed Company by Deloitte Private and The Wall Street Journal for six years running.

"Rumpke has been around since 1932. We are in our third and fourth generations of family leadership, and they have a very strong set of core values that we are reminded of as we conduct our business," explains Pratt. "Our core values are teamwork, quality, responsibility, growth, and perseverance."

Those values are now embedded in the design and operation of Rumpke's most advanced facility to date. From its AI-directed sorting to its dedicated material audit floor, research space, and X-ray scanning capabilities, the Columbus Recycling & Resource Center is more than a MRF. It's a scalable blueprint for what modern recycling can become.

This article originally appeared in the November/December issue of Recycling Product News.