Waste Reception and Treatment Process

When the trucks arrive, they are weighed, and undergo the initial sorting phase, which is carried out according to the type of vehicle and its contents. Dry waste and trimmings come to Hiriya via landscape trucks, household waste comes via compression trucks, and mixed waste comes in "Ramsa" (bathtub) garbage containers.

The vehicles are then directed to different facilities according to the type of waste they are carrying. At this stage, the majority of household waste goes from the small city trucks to the movers (full-trailers and semi-trailers) that transport the waste to the sanitary dumping sites approved by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Part of the waste (approximately 200 tons per day) is diverted to be recycled at the Arrow Ecology facility. Arrow Ecology is considered to be one of the leading facilities in the world in the treatment of waste products. It employs a unique sorting system – an Israeli "blue and white" development – through which organic waste is separated from non-organic waste using water.

This Israeli patent is based on the relative density and properties of different components of waste. The garbage trucks unload the garbage into a pool of water, and the force of gravity separates heavy and light waste, materials that absorb water (paper) and materials that do not (nylon and plastic), materials that maintain their cohesion in water (iron, other metals, glass, plastic, and nylon), and so on. Most of the materials are then sent to the appropriate recycling centers. Organic material floats on the surface of the pool and undergoes hydraulic crushing before being moved to fermentation tanks. In these tanks, natural methane gas is created, which is used to produce electricity and organic manure for agriculture. A large quantity of fluids accumulates during the fermentation process, and this is then used for irrigation purposes and for washing the waste trucks.

Approximately 250 tons of garden trimmings arrive at the Hiriya site each day. The trimmings reach the site with all the other waste, and are sorted during the first stage using mechanical tools that extract foreign waste (furniture, plastic, metals, etc.). When only the trimmings are left, they undergo another sorting procedure in which logs are separated and transported to the wood industry while branches and leaves are chopped and used as a basis for quality organic fertilizer. The varied recycling facilities at the Hiriya transfer station provide the most advanced waste treatment solutions in the world for city garbage. The entire sorting process is mechanical, and use of the human hand is minimal.