Prior to joining Rumpke as a Corporate Communications Intern, I had little knowledge about the waste and recycling industry. After only a week I have learned so much about the company and its processes that I would not have known otherwise. I have put together a set of true and false questions to test the public’s trivia knowledge of their local waste disposal company.

True or False? Rumpke Waste & Recycling got its start as a hog farm.

True! William F. Rumpke owned a hog farm in southwestern Ohio, near the current Colerain landfill location. Like many farmers in his time, he used trash from local restaurants and residents to feed his hogs for nourishment.  Eventually, people started throwing away much more than food scraps, and a law was passed stating that food must be cooked before being given to animals. William Rumpke decided to sell his hogs to focus solely on the waste management aspect of his business.

Read more about Rumpke’s history.

True or False? Glass can be recycled one time only.

False! Glass can be recycled an infinite amount of times. At Rumpke’s Materials Recycling Facility (MRF), glass is first sorted according to color. It can then be repurposed for many different uses, like making the fiberglass insulation used in homes, or ground down to be used as sand.

If you want to know more about the glass recycling process, read on for more information.

True or False? All Rumpke trucks run on diesel gas.

False! Rumpke is beginning to implement disposal trucks that run on compressed natural gas (CNG). This gas is a natural by-product of the landfills and can be harnessed to power the vehicles. Currently, Rumpke has 41 of these CNG trucks.

Interested in learning more about CNG-fueled trucks? Read this article.

True or False? Rumpke recycles plastic shopping bags.

False! Rumpke does not accept plastic bags as a recyclable material because they can get caught in the machinery at the recycling facility. All machines must be shut down before the tangled bag is removed from the equipment. This task slows the entire recycling process, as the time could have been used more effectively for sorting items that Rumpke does accept.

Not sure which plastics can be recycled? Check out this helpful blog post.

True or False? You do not have to remove the labels from bottles and cans before recycling.

True! Rumpke does not require that labels be removed from any bottles and cans before they are placed in a recycling bin. These labels burn off and disintegrate during the recycling process anyway, so it is not needed.

Rumpke’s Pinterest board outlines acceptable items and how to prepare each before recycling.

I’m looking forward to the rest of my summer here at Rumpke and everything that I will learn from this internship. If this first week has been any indication, I am confident that each day will bring me new information about the company. I am lucky to have become a part of the extended Rumpke family!

About the author: Sarah Mattina is the Summer 2014 Corporate Communications Intern. Throughout the summer she will explore more aspects of the waste and recycling business. Email her ideas sarah.mattina@rumpke.com.