They call it “single-stream” recycling, but it looks and sounds more like a raging river of refuse, with its own rapids and falls.

Every month, Greater Des Moines sends 2,700 tons of thrown-away paper, cans and plastic containers, all mixed together, to the massive building at 2742 E. Market St. on the Southeast Side. Recycling used to require sorting by the homeowner and more hand-sorting here. No longer. After a $4 million investment by Greenstar North America, it seems to be as close to fully automated as we can get.

The cast-off containers, newspapers and magazines from thousands of households come pouring into the plant, greeted by the heavy sound of specialized machinery. Spinning drums and a magnet do a lot of the sorting. Quick-fingered workers do the rest, pulling out a plastic shopping bag here and an old shirt there as trash flows past on a conveyor belt.

The debris goes up and down from one machine to the next until it has been sorted into neat – or at least specific – piles. Plastic here, metal there, paper just about everywhere. Then it’s off to a baler, where the stuff is mashed together and lashed with steel cord. A bundle of newsprint weighs in at 1,800 pounds.

Forklifts move the bundles through doors directly into boxcars lined up alongside the building. The cardboard is bound for Cedar Rapids. The paper goes to Wisconsin, or off to Mexico to be turned into the pages of the Mexico City Times. Steel rolls down the rails to the mills of Chicago. Aluminum is hauled to Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. The milk jugs go to Alabama, and the water bottles wind up in Kentucky.

Greenstar hired 21 employees to operate the single-stream recycling facility, which runs 10 hours a day, five days a week. Des Moines native Kelley McReynolds came home from Houston to serve as general manager of the plant.

The place could handle twice as much volume with its existing equipment, McReynolds said. That’s good, because Central Iowa has still more stuff to send. According to Greenstar, 56 percent of Des Moines residents are participating in the recycling program; in Urbandale, the rate is 66 percent; and Grimes, which starts with the same two letters as “green,” leads the pack with 77 percent participation.

Metro Waste Authority contributes more than 1,300 tons per month, and the organization’s Amy Hock said the next step is to line up more businesses to take part in recycling. So far, only a few are involved. To find out more about the possibility, start by contacting your garbage hauler.

It’s not too hard, now that all of your recyclables can go together. Although, if you want to be the best possible citizen, you do need to think things through. The nice, clean top of the pizza box can go to East Market Street. The greasy, cheesy part still belongs in the garbage.