PHOTO GALLERY: Revolution Recovery – An Alternative to Landfills   (Monica Cabrera)   Jon Harris reports for the Morning CallThings are bustling in this old Mack Trucks plant in Allentown.Truck after truck swings by to dump piles of construction and manufacturing debris, filling the plant with the noise of back-up alarms and creating a dusty cloudiness visible near the lights along the 30-foot-high ceilings. Nearby, an orange excavator springs to life, stretching its arm and then clenching its claw around a fistful of the pile, spewing it out into a smaller line on the floor. Next, workers — dressed in neon yellow vests and hardhats, along with white dust masks strapped around their faces — jump in, sorting through the materials and throwing metals, wood and rubble into the corresponding bin.Those bins are then dumped into a larger pile of the same materials, a mountain containing familiar and interesting items — a ladder in one of the metal piles; a plastic turtle sandbox in with the plastics; and a piece of wood labeled the “Griswold Residence.” Lastly, these towering piles are baled or chipped into more accessible sizes, so they can be sold to another company to make something new, extending the material’s life.“It’s definitely an ordered chaos now,” said Shane Clark, on the special projects team of Revolution Recovery, the company behind the Allentown operation that competes in the challenging recycling industry.Revolution Recovery opened the plant — its third overall, joining facilities in Philadelphia and New Castle, Del. — last year as an alternative to landfills in the area. The company bought the 11.5-acre, century-old property at 644 S. 10th St. in December 2017 for $4 million, lured to the recycling opportunity created by the Lehigh Valley’s development boom. The region’s strength was reaffirmed this week when the area was dubbed one of the fastest-growing regions in the Northeast by Site Selection magazine.Right now, Revolution Recovery’s operations occupy 80,000-100,000 square feet of the 265,000-square-foot building. While the company plans to rent out some of the space, the additional square footage gives it space for expansion and storage as its customer base grows. As it is now, the facility processes about 200 tons of waste per day, which is eventually expected to be closer to the 500 tons the company’s other two facilities handle.The site’s employment also is expected to grow. The facility employs just under 20 people, but that number could easily hit 30 by the end of the year, said Brian Gordon, the facility’s manager. Later this year, he expects to make more use of automation in the plant, becoming more efficient with a sort line that uses conveyor belts. Right now, the most automated activity is a cardboard baler that spits out 1,500-pound bundles.Read the full storyLike this? Click to receive free updates