SEATTLE (Recycling Monster): Waste Management in Fort Walton Beach held a ribbon cutting Thursday for its new recycling facility.

The new state of the art, single-stream recycling facility is able to process up to 76,000 tons of material a year.

Waste Management invested about $30 million into the new facility.

It will process materials from anywhere as far as Tallahassee, Biloxi, Mississippi, and even up to Jackson, Mississippi and beyond.

But much of the material recycled here will actually stay local.

"A lot of your material here in Fort Walton will actually stay locally for local paper mills," said Brent Bell, vice president of recycling for Waste Management. "Most of those paper mills now, they need recycled content. They don't operate virgin mills now where they cut down trees like in the decades past. They actually need those cardboard boxes so they can turn them into new cardboard boxes."

"Just having this in our backyard in the city limits is just phenomenal for us as a department and as a city," said Jeff Peters, Fort Walton Beach city manager.

The facility has 44 total jobs, with only 18 of them filled so far.

Courtesy: www.weartv.com