The RDS Athens, Georgia Facility is a 24,000 square foot building owned by the Athens – Clarke County Unified Government and operated by RDS personnel. RDS was awarded the bid to take over as processor starting October 1st, 2021.
Additional municipalities that RDS services from this location include Madison County, Oconee County, Oglethorpe County, the City of Bogart, University of Georgia, as well as a number of third party private hauling companies.

The Athens Recovered Material Processing Facility (RMPF) was constructed in 1995 and will be replaced in several years by a newly constructed Recycling Facility in the County, where the remainder of the current RDS contract with the ACC Government will continue.

OCC, or “Old Corrugated Containers” is one of the fiber materials sorted and baled at the facility. Once enough bales are in RDS inventory onsite, they are picked up and transported to be remanufactured into new cardboard boxes.

A large loader is used in the facility to push material from their bunkers into the baler and to load material from the tip floor into the hopper to then enter the sort line. The above picture is from an RDS site visit before taking over operations.

As a pile of cardboard grows, it will be pushed into the baler incline pit to be compressed and wire wrapped then stacked in a designated area before shipment.

RDS management assessed inventory at the facility that was inherited during the transition of operators. Managers worked onsite for several consecutive weeks leading up to the transfer and continued to travel to the site from Virginia to train personnel on standard operating procedures to ensure optimal processing and marketing of the materials received by Athens – Clarke County and a number of third-party haulers.