WM has opened a new $62 million recycling facility in Fort Worth. [Photo: WM]

WM—the Houston-based provider of comprehensive environmental solutions formerly known as Waste Management—has opened a new, $62 million recycling facility in Fort Worth. The new facility at 9600 Hemphill St. has the capacity to process up to 144,000 tons of material per year by leveraging advanced technology equipped with automation and artificial intelligence, the company said.

Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and City Manager Jay Chapa took part in a ribbon-cutting event for the new facility. Members of the Fort Worth City Council and Michelle Ford of the Green Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce were also on hand for the event.

Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and City Manager Jay Chapa took part in the ribbon cutting for WM’s new Fort Worth recycling facility. [Photo: WM]

“WM is excited to help drive circularity in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with this new recycling facility,” Domenica Farmer, WM Texas Oklahoma area VP, said in a statement. “The WM Fort Worth Recycling Facility is truly state-of-the-art and designed to help strengthen recycling and streamline material processing for communities across North Texas.” 

WM said the facility’s use of advanced tech—including optical sorters for fibers and plastic, eddy currents and magnets for metals, and advanced glass recovery systems—delivers key benefits. The technology allows WM to collect and sort more types of plastics, including those that it previously could not, such as yogurt containers made of polypropylene. It can also process higher quantities of material more efficiently to help support increased recycling in the community. 

Recycling to help make everything from backpacks to boxes to water bottles

Another key benefit: The technology reduces contamination challenges and improves the quality of the end product, providing WM’s customers with bales of recycled material that can be used to create new products—including curbside recycling bins and everyday items like backpacks, boxes, water bottles, cans and apparel.

WM said the new North Texas facility is part of its enterprise-wide plans to invest more than $1.4 billion in 39 new and upgraded recycling facilities across North America from 2022 to 2026. That expansion is expected to add approximately 2.8 million tons of incremental annual processing capacity by the end of 2026. The planned investments aim to enable WM to increase its ability to manage more recycled materials and potentially enhance access to recycling for its customers, the company said.

More on WM

WM says that across North America, it has the largest disposal network and collection fleet, is the largest recycler, and is a leader in beneficial use of landfill gas, with a growing network of renewable natural gas plants and the most landfill gas-to-electricity plants, as well as the largest heavy-duty natural gas truck fleet in the industry. Through its subsidiaries, WM provides collection, recycling and disposal services to millions of residential, commercial, industrial, medical and municipal customers throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Additionally, WM’s subsidiary WM Healthcare Solutions provides collection and disposal services of regulated medical waste and secure information destruction services in the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe.

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