Interactive Exhibits Teach Recycling in North America’s Largest Recycling Facility

The Rumpke Education Center is a 2,000-square foot, highly interactive exhibit within the new Rumpke Recycling & Resource Center, North America’s largest and most technologically advanced recycling facility, located in Columbus, Ohio.

Rumpke has educated school children visiting their recycling facilities for 30 years, but wanted to create an elevated experience that would appeal to visitors of all ages. “We wanted to take it up a level and that’s what this education center does,” said Amanda Pratt, Senior Vice President, Communications, Rumpke.

The Education Center is laid out as a linear tour that follows the recycling process from consumer purchasing to material collection to sorting to baling to eventual reuse as new products.

“Holt wowed us with their presentation. They worked with us very closely on our concept. The result is a fantastic interactive educational center,” said Pratt.

The highlights of the tour are 6 interactive exhibits that also include a combination of mechanical and electromechanical exhibits, digital interactives, video games, models and props. These 6 exhibits engage visitors at a deeper, more memorable level:

Marketplace – Become a Smarter Shopper Vignette and Video Game: A mock marketplace staged with retail store shelving and props of common grocery store items culminates in a gamified checkout station with a touch screen interactive video game. Players choose 5 actual items from the store, then scan them at the checkout. The integrated video game awards more points when players choose products packaged in recyclable materials, informing them of the effect their purchases make on the materials stream.
Collection – Trash or Recycling Video Game: In the Collection area, Rumpke-branded cans are on display next to an infographic shadowbox and interactive touch screen. The video game deployed on this touch screen challenges players to drop materials into either the brown trash bin or the green recycling bin. Depending on how a player chooses, their score totals up or down, teaching them what materials are recyclable. Educational facts are built throughout the game to provide more insights.
Sorting – Model Rumpke Truck, Rotating Trommel, and 2 Conveyor Belts: The Sorting interactive helps visitors experience and understand material sorting. Visitors physically tip the back end of a 1/8^th-scaled Rumpke truck model, sending a mix of materials down a chute and into a small trommel (a trommel is a large rotating tube with different-sized holes in it). As the trommel spins, it separates the materials by size into two collection chutes. The materials then travel down each chute to one of two moving conveyor belts. The belts carry the materials to the other end of the cabinet and collect them within two bins, sorted by size.
Material Recovery Facility (MRF) Model Table with RFID Interactive + LED Wall: This is the star attraction of the Educational Center. A large table houses a strikingly realistic 3D scale model of the plant’s massive Machinex MRF recycling machinery that sorts 60 to 70 tons of recycling per hour. “The model is a scaled version of exactly what we put together in the facility”, said Chris Hawn, CEO, Machinex. “It showed the life cycle of recyclable materials and showed to the world that what you are throwing in your curbside container is actually getting recycled.” When a visitor places the model of a Rumpke recycling can on one of 8 numbered circles above locations above the model, it triggers the matching equipment’s video to play on the LED wall. The videos are triggered by RFID (radio-frequency identification) microchips in the recycling can model and the numbered circles. Holt proposed this model and RFID-controlled videos to overcome the difficulty of touring the actual machinery due to its loud noise and huge size.
Magnet Magic – Sorting Aluminum and Steel Cans: This area provides both a touch screen interactive video game and a manual conveyor interactive. Visitors place empty aluminum and steel cans on the conveyor belt. When visitors turn the wheel, the conveyor moves the cans toward the far end of the conveyor. Magnets at the end of the conveyor help steel cans and aluminum cans to fall into two separate bins. The video game challenges players to separate cans from other materials, plus explains how ferrous and non-ferrous materials are sorted by an eddy current sorting machine. Finally, a 55” TV mounted above the end of the conveyor belt displays a looping video of an eddy current separator in action.
Light, Camera, Action! – Optical Sensor + Air Puff to Sort Plastic: This exhibit provides a fun electromechanical conveyor interactive. Visitors place empty water bottles on the conveyor belt. When one visitor manually turns a wheel, the conveyor belt moves bottles toward the far end of the conveyor. A pushbutton allows a second visitor to engage a quiet air compressor to try to pop the plastic bottles into the air right when they hit the end of the belt and before they fall into a basket below. A clear acrylic box keeps bottles from flying into the room. This interactive simply explains how an optical sorter works to separate materials using targeted puffs of air. The touch screen provides another learning video game about shooting recyclable materials into their appropriate collection bins.

Holt also designed, built, and installed several other, non-interactive, yet dimensional exhibit areas as part of the tour that teach visitors about recycling at the Rumpke plant:

Intro Area: A large, laminated shadowbox displays a welcome message and 4 clear acrylic vitrines displaying materials commonly processed in the recycling center. A set of 3D letters proclaims: “Together, let’s work towards a world where recycling becomes second nature, and the concept of waste is replaced with the idea of valuable resources waiting to be reborn.”
Baled Materials: This exhibit includes hefty bales of plastic bottles, cardboard, and metal cans, plus a supersized photo wall showing baled materials prepped and stacked on the recovery facility floor.
Infinite Reuse – This exhibit showcases glass cullet and fine grind that can be melted down and turned into new glass products in the future.
A New Life – Products Made from Recycled Materials: This two-sided exhibit describes how recycled materials are made into new products, which are organized and showcased by material type: plastic, paper, metal, and glass.
Recycling Creates Jobs: A large mosaic of photos of Rumpke workers and descriptive text portrays the vast economic and employment value of the circular economy.

Finally, after providing conceptual design, engineering, software development, fabrication and installation, Holt also trained Rumpke on exhibit maintenance, cleaning, and interactive navigation.

The grand opening and ribbon cutting event for the new Rumpke Recycling & Resource Center was held on Tuesday August 6th, 2024. Speakers in attendance at the event included Jon Husted, Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, Anne Vogel, Director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, and Kevin Boyce, Franklin County Commissioner.

Coming soon, a second phase of additional deliverables will include a Rumpke corporate timeline, storage cubbies for visitors to drop their personal belongings and bags before a new tour begins, and more.