WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) – A Mosinee company has won approval to build its own facility to sort recyclables in Wausau.

Industrial Recyclers of Wisconsin or IROW will tear down a vacant part of the building it owns on Bellis Street and build the processing facility, said president Cory Tomczyk. The work will happen this summer and the facility should be online by the fall, he said.

The facility will allow IROW to sort single-stream recyclables, meaning employees and optical scanners will help separate aluminum cans, plastic containers and glass bottles that residents can throw together into their curbside recycling bins. IROW will process about 500 tons a month.

“The single-stream has come to make recycling easier for the residential customer,” Tomczyk said. “We’ve made it more frequent to try increase the amount of recycling that people can participate in.”

The sorting happens over two steps. The first step has workers sorting out things that can’t be recycled and moving materials over a screen to catch any pieces of broken glass. The second step uses a series of optical “eyes” that will read the type of material and individually sort the recyclables.

“Our business is at the point where it needs to happen,” Tomczyk said, adding that the facility will eliminate the need to send recyclables to a third-party sorter.