Facility's

Inside Madison's old Washburn Observatory, a fat little engine rumbles away, pulling a series of gears that creak open the facility's shutter.

It's a quiet scene compared to Ellis Island's heyday between 1892 and 1924, during which 12 million immigrants passed through the facility's ornate, red-brick buildings, usually with little more than a satchel tied with rope and their loved ones in tow.

Sorted garbage arrives at the baler, which produces the facility's final product — pressed bales of plastic and metal, each weighing up to half a ton. Sims Recycling sells the bales to industrial plants where new bottles and cans are made for New Yorkers to use again.