Brooklyn's Newest Recycling Plant Is an Architectural Gem

This new recycling plant has some design chops.

Image via NY Times

A Sims Municipal Recycling Facility will be opening soon at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park. This facility will be NYC’s first large, state-of-the-art plant for processing recyclable glass, plastic, and metals. And unlike most constructions of this nature, this plant has some design chops.

Instead of allowing engineers to design the building, as is usually the case, Sims contracted out the project to NYC-based architectural firm Selldorf Architects. The group is known for building Chelsea art galleries. The facility is sleek, modern, well-proportioned, and elegant. Constructed using recycled steel on the edge of the water, the building glimmers in the sunlight. The facility is also partially solar powered and boasts the largest solar array in the city.

“Recycling is a high-minded although notoriously low-margin, capital-intensive, volume-based industry, dependent on increasing public participation” reportsThe New York Times' Michael Kimmelman. In order to encourage people to recycle, the facility will be friendly with its neighbors, and not hard on the eyes.

The opening will create jobs in the area, as well as reduce the amount of trash the city must pay to have exported.

RELATED: 25 Awesome Hacks for Recycling

[via: the New York Times]

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