SureSort in Pennsylvania: Automating CCRRA Curbside Recycling
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
One of the projects we're most proud of right now is on the other side of the world from our Auckland base — a curbside recycling automation upgrade we delivered for Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority (CCRRA) in Pennsylvania, together with our North American partner, Sparta Manufacturing.
Who is CCRRA?
CCRRA runs a genuinely impressive curbside collection program. In 2024 alone they processed over 12,000 tons of recyclables from more than 28,000 curbside customers and 800 commercial customers, producing over 11,450 high-quality bales of plastics, metals, cardboard, and mixed paper. Their source-separated collection model means clean, low-contamination material flows into the facility — a great foundation for automation to build on.
CCRRA also sits next to Penn State University's main campus, serving a base population of roughly 158,000 residents alongside a transient student population of around 50,000 that cycles in and out through the year. That combination makes for a genuinely variable waste stream — different recycling habits and fluctuating volumes throughout the year.
The plan
CCRRA's previous line relied on manually sorting a continuous stream of PET, HDPE, polypropylene, and aluminium containers — effective, but labour-intensive, and a limiting factor as material volumes and plastic variety grew. The Authority's collection fleet also dated back to the late 1980s, when recycling was first mandated in the area, and was no longer well matched to modern material streams.
CCRRA went looking for a way to modernise without losing the quality control their team had built over decades of operation — and importantly, without simply replacing people. The goal was to supplement manual sorting, not eliminate it.
The answer was our multi-lane SureSort system. As Sparta's VP of Sales Howard Fiedler put it when the project was announced, Alchemy "turned the traditional optical sorting model on its head" — instead of one optical sorter per commodity, each SureSort lane sorts every container type that passes through it, with capacity to expand as CCRRA's volumes grow. Sparta took on the project as systems integrator, engineering and manufacturing the conveyors and structural steel and integrating the SureSort system into the line, working closely with our team throughout design.
The result
The completed system is a dual-lane SureSort installation, with Alchemy's AI vision system identifying target recyclables — aluminium cans, PET bottles, HDPE containers, and more — in real time and positively ejecting each commodity, plus trash, at their own outlets. Material that isn't captured on the first pass recirculates through the automated portion of the line again, optimising both recovery and purity.
Rather than replacing CCRRA's manual sorters, the system was built to work alongside them — automating at key points in the process while people continue to play a central role elsewhere in the line. Since going live, CCRRA has seen increased processing efficiency and uptime, improved material recovery rates, and a more scalable setup that can adapt as material streams and volumes keep changing.
Getting there took real collaboration: cross-functional teams from CCRRA, Sparta, and Alchemy worked through the design and build together, which Sparta credits with faster decision-making and a smoother installation with minimal disruption to ongoing operations.
What made this project work
A few things stood out about how this project came together:
We worked closely with the systems integrator and the facility itself, from initial design through to installation, so the technology was properly integrated into the wider system rather than bolted on.
We built the system to handle CCRRA's genuinely high material variability — a fluctuating student population and shifting packaging trends — rather than designing for an idealised, steady waste stream.
The project moved from concept to full operation without major disruption to CCRRA's day-to-day running.
You can read more on Sparta's blog — their original announcement, Sparta & Alchemy Partner with CCRRA to Revolutionize Curbside Recycling Automation, and their follow-up once the system was up and running, Building Smarter Recycling Systems in High-Variability Environments.
Curious whether a multi-lane SureSort system fits your facility? Get in touch — we work with partners like Sparta around the world to deliver projects just like this one.
