Slashdot Mirror
Recycling Is Dying
HughPickens.com writes: Aaron C. Davis writes in the Washington Post that recycling, once a profitable business for cities and private employers alike, has become a money-sucking enterprise. Almost every recycling facility in the country is running in the red and recyclers say that more than 2,000 municipalities are paying to dispose of their recyclables instead of the other way around. "If people feel that recycling is important — and I think they do, increasingly — then we are talking about a nationwide crisis," says David Steiner, chief executive of Waste Management, the nation's largest recycler.
The problem with recylcing is that a storm of falling oil prices, a strong dollar and a weakened economy in China have sent prices for American recyclables plummeting worldwide. Trying to encourage conservation, progressive lawmakers and environmentalists have made matters worse. By pushing to increase recycling rates with bigger and bigger bins — while demanding almost no sorting by consumers — the recycling stream has become increasingly polluted and less valuable, imperiling the economics of the whole system. "We kind of got everyone thinking that recycling was free," says Bill Moore. "It's never really been free, and in fact, it's getting more expensive."
One big problem is that China doesn't want to buy our garbage anymore. In the past China had sent so many consumer goods to the United States that all the shipping containers were coming back empty. So US companies began stuffing the return-trip containers with recycled cardboard boxes, waste paper and other scrap. China could, in turn, harvest the raw materials. Everyone won. But China has launched "Operation Green Fence" — a policy to prohibit the import of unwashed post-consumer plastics and other "contaminated" waste shipments. In China, containerboard, a common packaging product from recycled American paper, is trading at just over $400 a metric ton, down from nearly $1,000 in 2010. China also needs less recycled newsprint; the last paper mill in Shanghai closed this year. "If the materials we are exporting are so contaminated that they are being rejected by those we sell to," says Valerie Androutsopoulos, "maybe it's time to take another look at dual stream recycling."
The problem with recylcing is that a storm of falling oil prices, a strong dollar and a weakened economy in China have sent prices for American recyclables plummeting worldwide. Trying to encourage conservation, progressive lawmakers and environmentalists have made matters worse. By pushing to increase recycling rates with bigger and bigger bins — while demanding almost no sorting by consumers — the recycling stream has become increasingly polluted and less valuable, imperiling the economics of the whole system. "We kind of got everyone thinking that recycling was free," says Bill Moore. "It's never really been free, and in fact, it's getting more expensive."
One big problem is that China doesn't want to buy our garbage anymore. In the past China had sent so many consumer goods to the United States that all the shipping containers were coming back empty. So US companies began stuffing the return-trip containers with recycled cardboard boxes, waste paper and other scrap. China could, in turn, harvest the raw materials. Everyone won. But China has launched "Operation Green Fence" — a policy to prohibit the import of unwashed post-consumer plastics and other "contaminated" waste shipments. In China, containerboard, a common packaging product from recycled American paper, is trading at just over $400 a metric ton, down from nearly $1,000 in 2010. China also needs less recycled newsprint; the last paper mill in Shanghai closed this year. "If the materials we are exporting are so contaminated that they are being rejected by those we sell to," says Valerie Androutsopoulos, "maybe it's time to take another look at dual stream recycling."
Every waste disposal stream has costs. The choice is what we're willing to pay to deal with it.
That, and most Americans are too fucking lazy to sort, or have any kind of care in avoiding contamination (or even learning what that means).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
What a surprise! Shipping trash to China is *not* "recycling". If those trash were actually worth recycling, then do it within your borders.
Just burn the stuff for energy. It's better than letting it pile up and getting into our oceans.
Reduce, Reuse...Incinerate.
Life is not for the lazy.
So because China cut back imports and we have no one to sell it to the plants are struggling. It isn't that consumers aren't interested but that recycling companies who made their profits by selling raw materials can't sell those materials any more.
Stop blaming consumers when it is other companies and goverents at fault. Next recycling companies will want consumers to shred and sort everything ahead of time so they can save more money.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
it's the American way, after all. And now you can feel better by saying it's expensive to recycle anyway.
I RTFA the article on contamination.
It's very disengenuous.
For example it's all "oe noes toxic inks removed from paper during recycling are landfilled", so recycling is bad! Somehow this is different from dumping the very same toxic inks into a land fill while temporarily attached to paper.
The same complaint is repeated through the article.
Basically they're blaming recycling for the toxic crap that's in stuff, while ignoring the fact that landfilling toxic crap has exactly the same problems.
And lead based spray paints? Apart from for historical reconstruction work, lead paint has been illegal here since 1992.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If we don't want to save the world because it's "not profitable", then we are truly fucked. What are we, Ferengi?
My dad has gone to China twice in the last year to set up new Mills in Guangzhou.
I'm an American. We recycle in our home and business. It was my understanding that the paper/plastic stuff was being recycled here in America. Electronics were being shipped to China. The summary states that the overseas market for American recycled goods is drying up. I do not see why all of the paper/plastic that I recycle isn't recycled in the US, other than greed. Take what you can get for it locally,turn the paper into pulp and put the plastics into new goods, and stop complaining about cost. Recycling is getting more expensive like most other things. It's still better than putting it all in landfills.
One big problem is that China doesn't want to buy our garbage anymore.
Well, we westeners are still happy to buy all sorts of garbage manufactured in China. ;)
Really Aluminum, glass, and steel are easy to recycle. Plastic and paper can be burned for energy or recycled. I am not a fan of "green" as I feel most are just nut balls but come on I see recycling as just the way we should throw stuff away.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
How many years have these plants been running at a profit? How long have they had to improve techniques and cut costs to make this more efficient? Gas is no cheaper than it was 15 years ago (inflation adjusted) so what is the hold up? One bad year and "welp lets fold up shop!"
Sounds like a shake down of municipalities.
then we are talking about a nationwide crisis,
Crisis: the most overused word of the environmental movement. Nothing is ever a snag or a bump along the way that needs to be sorted out. No siree, everything is a world ending crisis. Not enough demand for recycled cardboard? OMG. it's a crisis.
The problem is international trade. Stop mixing unrelated things or you won't solve anything.
If you're sending residues (it's not garbage, it's input for other uses) overseas, that's a cheap trick. You're profitting from advantages in another country, just like Europeans sell garbage to Sweden (IIRC).
Don't! Do yourself the recycling and get the full results of it. If properly done, you might even discover it's advantageous to do what Sweden does -- namely, importing rather than exporting recyclables.
By not taking our garbage Chinese are increasing costs of exporting their products which in turn makes it more profitable to manufacture in US.
Make American citizens wash and sort their garbage to save money on the recycling process! The people who voluntarily perform this valuable service will be fairly compensated for their labor, and people who don't feel like washing and sorting - well, they can just collect that and let other enterprising citizens wash and sort it for them! And they can get paid for it! Just think of all the high-paying, safe jobs that could be created. ... Wait, what do you mean that people aren't going to be paid to paw through their trash? So we have citizens compelled to perform labor under threat of violence? And people don't want to paw through their filthy garbage for fun? Well, this is a crisis! What are we to do, have recycling companies specializing in these processes do it for people? That's just absurd! Centralized, mechanized facilities engineered for washing and sorting trash could never be feasible. It's not like different materials have different physical properties easily discernible by a variety of mechanisms.
What ever are we to do! How can recycling old materials be more expensive than simply throwing them away and making things from new materials?!?!? If we continue on the present course, the future is bleak: one day, the cost to recycle might actually become competitive with making things from new raw materials, at which point - gasp! - recycling might actually be a profitable enterprise! This cannot be allowed to come to pass since capitalists hate you and want you to die.
So much hate. So much hate.
but reimagining is on the rise
...why is it that Slashdot is almost entirely posts ripped from reddit and ArsTechnica? From weeks ago?
Oh right, DICE. Incidentally, Soulskill, I hope someone fucks you in the ass with a spiked curling iron.
Recycling is just a manifestation of the sorts of externalities that fundamentally flaw many economic systems. For example, I find it intriguing that in London people go buy a plastic packaged sandwich that is relatively tasteless for lunch, while a comparatively poor person in Vietnam or Malaysia goes to a local shop and buys an incredibly tasty freshly made noodle bowl for about a tenth of the price.
Which of those people is really wealthier? Sure one has fiat currency wealth, but the other arguably enjoys (food wise anyway) a better quality of life.
This is the insanity of measuring the well-being of your citizens by how much fiat currency they are accumulating. It is even crazier because we now have a huge section of the economy (the financial industry) that is effectively just creating fiat currency - i.e. no real wealth. This is no surprise if you have a system that is ambivalent to whether GDP growth is coming from breaking windows and fixing them or creating a new treatment for cancer.
Personally I just think this is because free market economics and the blind pursuit of GDP growth are attractive to lazy politicians. They don't have to think about real social issues, come up with plans to deal with them, and then be held responsible for whether they succeed. They can just go, 'hey the market does what the market does', and leave it to their banking buddies to create asset bubbles in the housing market if they can't get any GDP growth in the real economy.
It will be a hard problem to change the way we measure economic success in both the minds of government and society, but if we don't eventually we will just see our real wealth bleed away until fiat currency becomes as worthless as its intrinsic value would suggest.
Generate electricity, drive down utility rates.
A simple solution (on paper, not simple to implement with the current state of US politics) is to apply proportional sales tax to a product - where the tax is proportioned to the pollution caused during the production and usable life of the product. So those water bottles in plastic will have a high tax rate. The government then parks the additional tax and uses it to subsidize recycling efforts. This will make eco-friendly products finally a good alternative to cheap, throw-away goods.
Landfills just show our how consumerist our society is. How much electron shit do we really need? And this constant upgrading is unnecessary.
I got a Motorola phone with Android 2.2 - those assholes at Motorola don't allow for upgrading Android any further. Gotta buy a new phone if I want a newer Android.
There is no excuse for that. It shows the unsustainable idiocy of the consumer electronics industry and I refuse to participate any further.
Except for aluminum it has always been a government issued license to steal.
But it makes you feel good about yourself to separate your newspapers from your glossy magazines and put them in separate bins, and that's what matters, right?
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: recycling is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered environmental community when IDC confirmed that recycling market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all waste. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that recycling has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *Recycling is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent urban priorities poll.
You don't need to be the Amazing Randi to predict recycling's future. The hand writing is on the wall: recycling faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for recycling because recycling is dying. Things are looking very bad for recycling. As many of us are already aware, recycling continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
There was an interesting report that came out about our local recycling. All glass that is recycled, the municipality ends up taking to the dump anyways. They said there is zero demand for recycled glass so they have no option except throwing it in the dump. However, they do tell people to keep recycling it anyways since when they eventually do find a source to take it, they dont want people throwing it out instead
Phoenix has a central separation facility. Everyone gets a blue wheelie bin, somewhat smaller than the regular trash wheelie. Everything recyclable goes into the blue bin, and it gets separated at one downtown facility.
Because recyclables tend to be light but bulky items like milk jugs and newspapers, having to ship recycled material overseas means we have already lost. Processing needs to be by city and region, so transportation costs don't eat up the value of the material and so that the value of what is produced stays in our economy. In my rural area we have "German-style" recycling, in which end-users separate everything into a series of village bins. Not that many people, especially the young, are wiling to put in the time to do that.
The solution is easy.
You must force the products to include a "tax" to pay the service to recycle and scrap the 100% of the materials. This "tax" is a deal with recycling enterprises to ensure that any matter is bad processed.
So, recyclable items will have more value, and the end of life of the product should be cheaper, even a profit. Recycling costs will be internalized and some more expensive products nowadays but designed to be completely recycled could be cheaper in the new scheme. Very cheap to create but dirty to scrap products will become more costly.
This planet has finite resources. Past three to four decades has seen increase in consumer (not customer) attitudes for "use and throw" culture. Advertising, in-built obsolescence, consumer's rapidly changing tastes are all to blame.
Everything (even rubbish products) require energy and other resources, to produce. A bigger problem exists for disposing them carefully. I foresee going back to change in consumer attitudes of owning few solid & good things which will last for long.
Insofar entertaining (experiencing) new things are concerned, we are witnessing developments in augmented reality.
I find it oddly funny that China doesn't want to buy our "contaminated" garbage, but is perfectly happy to ship us products contaminated with lead and other toxic stuff.
That is the Chinese recycling program at work.
Ship all their toxic crap to the US in the form of contaminated products and then when the US ships it back as "recyclables" deny it entry because it is contaminated with toxic crap.
It's genius really, if you think about it.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
They will buy it definitely! No garbage no food!
Even if its better than putting it in landfills, its still still more expensive...
In my lifetime I've learned one truth, The Cheaper option almost always wins even if its more expensive in the long run.
Sorting trash looks like a place Social Dem model government could provide good union living wage jobs.
Garbage man has been a good union living wage job for a century. Make recycling sorting another good union living wage job.
First, stop recycling glass, it is a boondoggle. It takes more energy than just making more glass. Throw it in the ocean, we all like beach glass. Just put it someplace where it statistically will get polished smooth before it washes up on a beach, problem solved. Outlaw any kinds of glass for containers that would present an environmental hazard due to additives.
Second, let's get packaging under control, and just produce a whole lot less of it. And if we produce less plastic bottles, and go back to using more glass, then we won't need to do as much recycling, see point above. But packaging is just idiotic. What percentage of plastic clamshells are even stamped for recycling? That should be illegal. Everything plastic over a few grams should have to be marked for recycling by law if you want to sell it. For the want of a trivially-expensive feature, tons of plastic has to go to landfills that could reasonably be recycled. And since it's not food waste, it's not dirty.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... perhaps it will be recycled once it becomes completely dead.
Or start a Packaging Tax to defray the costs of recycling those packages later. Then the prices of various products will correctly reflect the total cost up-front and consumers can make their more rational choices.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I stopped recycling because it became absurd . What they will except and won't except it's just plain stupid. Cardboard yes. Pizza boxes no . Glossy cardboard boxes no glossy paper know . Magazines yes.
The restrictions are just too stupid I'm not gonna waste my time so they can profit.
Most of what consumers throw away is packaging. All we need is a packaging tax, and tax benefits for responsible packaging. This can be done before products reach consumers. They'll just be happy to have less to throw away. Creating a burden on every citizen to sort and recycle has never been the solution.
Really recycling isn't better for the environment for anything that is economically more costly to recycle than throw away. It is just a sacrament for the Pagan Gaia worshipers, just like the majority of environmental fads.
Lets look at paper recycling. According to environmentalists, paper breaks down very slowly in landfills and thus should be recycled. But these same environmentalists tell us that releasing CO2 is causing climate change. So on the one hand paper carbon sink in landfill is bad because its not recycling, but on the other hand releasing the CO2 into the air during recycling is also bad. So which one is it? Oh wait its not about whats best for the environment, its all about feeling like one has done right, i.e. religious sacrament.
We don't manufacture therefore we don't have a use for recycled raw materials.
Industry has gotten laws passed around the country that require recycling. That way, the tax payer pays to supply them with a useful material.
Here in Wisconsin, they passed laws to require recycling a number of years ago. The State provided $100,000 a year for five years to get the system started in the County in which I live. The local garbage company (Waste Management) set up a couple sites around the County. WM put in sectioned dumpsters to sort out the different colored glass, metal, and plastic. When one of the eight sections was full, they would haul away the whole dumpster. It amazingly cost WM exactly $100,000 a year to supply recycling services to the County, and the County and Towns still had to pay to have the sites staffed three times a week. Once the five years of State money ran out, there was no need to sort glass from metal from plastic anymore, and a dumpster only gets hauled away when they have to pile stuff up around it because it's jammed full. I don't know how much WM charges nowadays, but I'm sure it's less than the original $100,000 because there's no way the County could afford that.
The Industry doesn't want anybody to know that metal and glass are infinitely recyclable and a great material. That way, they can charge you to haul it away and then resell it.
Should we be asking ourselves what's the point of recycling ?
The only answer that makes sense to me is that we should recycle to save raw materials and ultimately the energy required for processing those materials.
We might want to factor in trash control but that is intangible and recycling does not reduce trash by the side of the road..
And minimizing the space used for landfill is another intangible. Modern landfill science seems to provide a way to reclaim otherwise unusable land for useful purposes.
If it costs more to recycle used materials than it does to bury the discarded material in a landfill and start with fresh raw materials, then what is the point of recycling ?
Here is a head-scratcher: There are two garbage trucks for my neighborhood.
Every Monday, truck #1 arrives to pick up garbage, then every-other week, a second truck arrives to haul away materials for recycling ...
How much does that second truck truly cost compared to the savings obtained from the list materials we're told we can recycle ?
Without doing a detailed cost analysis, the life-cycle of an object made of glass comes to mind ...
Compare the cost of collecting and burying used glass in a landfill and then processing fresh sand into new glass vs collecting and reprocessing used glass -- does it really make sense to recycle old glass ?
I dunno ... just wondering ...
-- kjh
Then recycling needs to be subsidized by the government. I would hate to see landfills fill up with recyclables.
Garbage man has been a good union living wage job for a century.
Wait, no it hasn't. (Hell, Dr. Martin Luther King was *killed* during that particular strike...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I dont even bother putting the can out because these fuckers are too lazy to get out of the truck then they leave a note on my door that it was 4 inches too close to the trash can or some cany read and parks in front of it. The problem with recycling is ita a stupid fucking idea. Can I recyle a bag of nails I dug up from fill dirt in my back yard? Can wood be recycled and chopped up to make junk snail mail? No, none of that is possible. Only certain things can be recycled and it varies by city. There is an eletronics recycling here and they arent connected, why should I pay for recycling then drive somewhere else and recycle different things there?
Jesus Christ America.
This is supposed to be your science nerd forum and not even the authors have learned about units of measure?
A good cost analysis is never difficult.
Speaking as a certified accountant I could not disagree more. If you think cost analysis "is never difficult" then you don't understand how to do it properly. Some trivial cost accounting problems are easy but that describes a rather small subset of the cost analysis problems out there. Let me put it this way, I get paid fairly well because cost accounting isn't something just anyone can do competently.
On the one hand, recycling is currently too expensive; it's often cheaper to make new glass (depending on the use) from the sand that covers much of the planet than to re-manufacture from used glass, cheaper to make new steel than recycle old steel, cheaper to make new paper than recycle old paper, and so-on. It's also too expensive right now to use human labor to take apart complex manufactured products and sort the parts by material for already-too-expensive recycling of those parts.
On the other hand, however, we all know that the supply of raw materials on Earth is mind-bogglingly large but not unlimited. We know that some day in the far future there will be no choice but to recycle. At some point between now and then there will be a tipping point where recycling things will be cheaper than making new stuff from raw materials
The solution should be obvious to any Slashdotter, but the self-identified environmentalists can be counted on to oppose it:
Collect roughly-sorted trash from consumers (glass, metal, consumer electronics, paper, garbage) and throw it into sorted, marked, well-documented landfills. Generations from now our descendents can send their robots to these sites (treating them like pre-surveyed mines) to sort and recycle the materials. Two hundred years from now, robots will be able to easily and cheaply mine these dumps and even use complex sensors to cheaply sort various types of metals, components, etc (which most minimum-wage humans today cannot do) for optimum recycling.
Making people inefficiently do today in substandard conditions, for substandard wages, with substandard results for purely ideological reasons something robots will be able to efficiently do later is simply stupid and shows no faith in technology and future engineers.
Plastic isn't worth recycling. Stuff it in an incinerator and power your cities with it. It's really no worse than power plants that operate on fuel oil. except at least people got some use from the plastic before it went it. Plus it gives us a viable option for medical waste.
Don't get me wrong, I care a damn lot about the planet, but is recycling help the planet that much?
I mean, in 2014
How much % of world total pollution is avoided because of recycling?
How much % of world total greenhouse gas is avoided because of recycling?
How much % of world total landfill is avoided because of recycling?
And I mean the real number that are recycled, not the quantity that enter recycling center because half is sent to the landfill anyway and another half is lost in the transforming process (except maybe aluminium and some others)
Unless someone convince me of recycling efficiency, I think we should start thinking about other mean.I know there's still a lot of issue, but plasma gasification seem to have a bigger potential than recycling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/...
Elok
Surprise... Where I live, the town, thankfully, does not involve itself in picking up regular garbage — so competing little companies do it. The phone book lists over 15 of them... Our choice comes twice a week early in the morning, get the junk out of the bins themselves for the cost of $25 month. We never even see them.
On contrast, the recycling is done "for free" by the county employees — so everybody must drag their recyclable refuse to the curb the evening before and it only happens bi-weekly, so you have to hold your plastic and cardboard. Oh, and more often than not, it is still there at 8 or even 10 in the morning — "beautifying" the neighbourhood. Adding to the "beauty" is the requirement that the bags be fully transparent...
"Encourage" my tail — it is illegal to throw recyclables into regular garbage here, as is not separating them cardboard/paper and from the rest categories...
"Progress" is supposed to mean improvement, but the assholes, who hijacked (and sullied) the name "Progressives" (as they did with "Liberals" earlier) would — if given an opportunity — have us regress into Stone Age... For the Greater Good[TM].
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Raw materials, when mined, are not refined
Realistically lots of recycled materials effectively require a "refining" step. That recycled milk jug comes frequently isn't clean so it has to be processed before the materials can be utilized.
you also have to expend more effort and energy to refine them and turn them into something useful
You have to do the same for recycled materials. The real question is whether less effort and energy (thus less cost) is required to recycle. For some products (like aluminum) the energy to turn ore into ingots is MUCH higher than to recycle. For others (like plastic) the economic advantage of recycling isn't so clear because it's relatively cheap to make the virgin product.
With recycling, you bypass a lot of that, so it should be cheaper and more efficient: instead of going through all these refining steps, you just take some used HDPE, grind it up and/or melt it down, and make more HDPE containers out of it.
Unfortunately it isn't that simple. Recycled materials require that they to be sorted, contaminants have to be removed, it has to be cleaned, it has to be processed into a useable form for processing. These costs are not trivial and the waste stream is definitely not clean and well organized. Furthermore for many materials like plastics or paper the contaminants cannot always be removed or the chemical structure is altered such that they cannot be a perfect substitute for virgin materials.
So if the economics are favoring using virgin raw materials instead of recycling existing refined materials, we're doing something really wrong.
Or it means that it is a more difficult problem than you are presuming. It sounds like it should be easier but unless the energy inputs for the raw materials are very high (like for aluminum) for processing raw materials relative to recycled there is no particular reason to presume that recycling should be more energy or labor efficient than processing from raw materials. It sounds good on paper but that doesn't mean the economics work out nicely in the real world.
So I'd say the cost of landfills for consumers is far too high -- it needs to be free, like it is with e-waste, if we want to avoid people dumping everywhere (and not have a police state).
It cannot be free because it has costs. You can address the costs indirectly like through taxes but you cannot provide something for free that actually has an economic cost. TANSTAAFL and all that. Furthermore even if you did make dropoff free, people still will dump things because driving halfway across your county to the local dump is time consuming and costly. The nearest landfill to me would cost me about $10-15 in gasoline to get to (plus my time) so it isn't free even the landfill doesn't charge me a drop fee. Now I don't want to live in a landfill so I personally wouldn't just dump things any old place but I can understand why people often do.
Security holes, It Crashes. UI is flaky. It's a piece of shit.
The problem isn't that recycling *isn't* profitable, it's not profitable for Waste Management which is the largest waste disposal company in the US. They view the landfills that they operate as mining interests and like all mine-able resources there's value fluctuation. Too bad, we must recycle and local/state governments need to push back when people don't want to separate glass from paper, it's about the environment not a company's ability to make more money off of refuse. Shit, in my community Waste Management came in and gave us all big bins where we had separation before, they created the stream problem in the first place!
I also find it problematic that China doesn't want our trash yet that would seem that if there's a consumable that could be manufactured from recycled materials, why isn't it being done in the US? The logistics stream to get a ton of recycled paper to China must be huge and expensive, why can't that be done in Detroit or some other urban area putting unemployed people back to work. The recycling issue is a microcosm for the larger economic picture, recycle the waste here, produce the materials that are value added here and then export them if there's demand. If there's no demand then why are we using the source materials in the first place? An example: plastic bottles vs. glass bottles.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Considering the tangibile evidence that our species and , indeed, the entire planet is being poisoned by endocrine disruptors contained in petro-plastics; I don't understand why we're still wasting our time recycling these things. It only serves to extend the cycle of destruction while artificially propping up the market and supporting production of new petro-plastics. It's definitely worth suffering through the additional endocrine disruptor leech from our landfills until we've trashed the entire idea and moved on to bioplastics.
It's even becoming arguable that paper recycling is a carbon sinking enterprise that produces nasty chemical byproducts. With renewable crops like pine, eucalyptus, and hemp capable of producing paper; we'll eventually gain more efficiency by dumping paper waste into the landfill, as well.
Clearly, I meant to say it's arguable that some types of recycling produce more carbon pollution than it sinks. Whoops.
Recycling and lowered demand for recycled materials would not be an issue if there were considerably less things to recycle. Most of my garbage and recycling comes from food packaging. If you go to a store to buy burger patties, each burger is wrapped in paper, which is wrapped in plastic, which is wrapped in paper carton box which is wrapped in thin plastic foil which is then put in a plastic bag. This is ridiculous. You can get 200ml of water in a plastic bottle and waste a huge amount of packaging just to get the stuff that comes out of the tap. Tomatoes are on a plastic tray wrapped in a thin plastic foil adorned with a printed vignette.
Back in Slovakia, about 25 years ago, vast majority of beverages came in standardized glass bottles, that were reused (not recycled). Meats, and cheeses and other deli products were sold by weight wrapped in a wax paper that disintegrates in about a month, vegetables were not wrapped at all, good portion of other goods (baking needs, candy, etc.) was in simple paper wrappers. You went to the store with your own reuable (not just recyclable) bags. A family of four filled about 7l garbage can in 3 days, mostly with paper. Newspapers and metal were recycled, but plastic was basically a non-issue.
Yes, it needed a strong government to get it done, but there is no reason why the same cannot be achieved by taxing the shit out of all these wrappers to the point where they become less profitable than a more sensible solution.
My brother runs the recycling facility for Waste Management out of Port of Tacoma. It serves most of the northwest area. They are making money hand over fist. He says that WM is expanding it's recycling business, not shrinking it.
If recycling is not economical, we can release those BTUs in a modern clean furnace, and then the disposal costs are miniscule.
The traditional mindset of "sort, then recycle" imposes a huge up-front cost - sorting is expensive regardless of where you insert it into the recycling process. If they just pulled the metals out then shredded the rest, Thermal Depolymerization would eat just about anything plastic or organic. Maryland's Easter Shore has a huge problem with chicken-shlt running into the Chesapeake. There's way more poop than the local farmers can spread onto their fields as fertilizer. Maryland needs to seed a TDP plant as part of it's initiatives to protect the Bay. Just simply trucking it out costs too much, but converting it into light-crude would change the economics.
awwww did someone get butthurt the big bad logical meanie?
What seems to be dying is that China doesn't want to pay for USian garbage. I wouldn't call selling garbage - recycling. Maybe all the US side has to do is to clean the plastics before dropping them on the ship? Why not clean/recycle it themselves and send usable containers back to China?
That tax already exists, it's the cost of disposal, and this thread is littered with people who are whining that it's both too low and too high. WTF.
WTF is with only single or dual?
In my dining room I have bins for:
Metals
Glass
Mixed Paper
Cardboard
Plastic
I drive them to a drop off point a couple of miles away where there are dumpsters for each type. So I'm doing 5 stream and people balk at doing 2?
and I'm in a not exactly environmentally friendly state (TN) and a not exactly modern city (Knoxville). Surely Californians can keep up with 5 stream recycling?
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure what makes recycling expensive is that when we don't sort or wash things, the recyclers have to do it.
Why do either of us need to do it by hand, though? Sorting metals and glass from paper and plastic shouldn't be that hard to do mechanically. They have different densities, for one thing. There has to be a way to use that. Or perhaps a machine that puts all the junk through a narrow passage that opens somewhere else whenever it detects a "clink." Then there's at least a great deal less stuff to handsort. If it works well enough without the handsorting, you could just push all the glass and metals apart with the lenz effect. That's two categories done.
Separating paper from plastic is a bit trickier if you want to actually keep using the paper, but why? Paper is easily the least necessary thing to recycle. We plant more trees to specifically to become paper than we cut down to make it. Soak all the paper and plastic garbage together. Anything that becomes a bunch of disgusting mush is paper, with mostly food waste stuck to it. Fish the plastic out of the slurry, let the evil papier mache dry, chop it up and do basically whatever you want with it, up to and including throwing it out the window. It's biodegradable. It's not good mulch, but it can be part of mulch. Or fuel. Or some kind packing or building material, if you vacuum seal it or something. I don't know. Nobody should care. It's paper.
The point is, after you do all that, you have the plastic, or at least you have stuff that is mostly the lion's share of the plastic from what you collected. And that's the problem material. It's the crap you need to do something with that is very hard to make money off of. Why are we handwashing it? Slice all the containers to bits, then boil the shit out of them. Done. Now you have a whole bunch of plastic that the Chinese can melt down and... do whatever it is they do with it.
Some else have mentioned glass as not being worth recycling and prompted me to read up on the issue.
It appears that there is some monetary value in recycling glass. The problem is that it isn't a high value like for metals. The article I read mentioned $1,400 for a ton of Aluminum scrap, but the same weight of Cullet, which is crushed glass, was only worth $25 a ton at best and $0 at worst. Cullet from clear glass is worth the most at about $25, brown $15, and green mostly worthless. The trouble is that Cullet isn't able to magically transport its self to a buyer, so a recycler is stuck with the prospect of trying to ship a ton of product that is at best worth $25. So if you don't have a buyer close by you could easily spend more money transporting the Cullet than you could ever hope to be paid for it.
So the answer is, sometimes. If you have a buyer for your Cullet nearby and you can sell it to them cheaper than they can buy sand then it's profitable.
I think it's time grocery stores and suppliers evaluate the long-term benefits of shifting toward containerless product delivery. Why sell goods to consumers in boxes, bottles and jugs when these incur a great deal of waste both in packaging costs and recapture? Why not use dispensers for milk, cereal, BBQ sauce, whatever, where a consumer could simply bring their own containers to fill and pay by weight? Sure, containers could be sold there for those who didn't bring enough. I know this is a pie in the sky idea, but if a new grocery store opened near you using this new methodology, wouldn't you try it?
The recycling system in my home town is totally self sufficient and makes a profit that goes back into the town budget... Why? Because they don't do the do the ZeroSort bullshit, and they manage it themselves instead of paying some profit driven asshats like WasteManagement to do it for them... You have to sort your recyclables yourself, and if you get caught throwing out recyclables you get fined.
ZeroSort is expensive, and people just treat ZeroSort bins like trashcans... its no wonder those programs aren't profitable.
Currently, one can invest in the production of any device or thing, mass produce it, an sell it worldwide for rapid gain.
The consumer purchase the item and discards it after use. That has been the model for thousands of years.
Missing is the chain of responsibility. No one is responsible for the end of the line.
Recycling is a step forward, forcing the consumers to take responsibility for the end-of-life of the product.
Packaging reduction, green packing and materials attempts to put some responsibility onto the producers.
==>The consumers have no use for garbage, nor means of disposal. My kid has no clue what to do with a tantalum base filter.
==>Producers have no incentive to be green. Profit is tied to sells, not green packaging.
Mass production just makes the above worst.
==>A simple way to fix this is to force producer to be responsible for the end-of-life of their product. So in short, do not produce stuff which will bankrupt you with its end-of-life handling.
APK, please kill yourself. You are completely worthless. You have no redeeming qualities. You do not provide any added value to the world. No one likes you. No one wants you. Give up and die already.
For years I have felt that recycling would never catch on effectively at the individual level. No amount of education is going to increase caring enough to go through the process at home. Automation will eventually make it work the way it should and be economical. We have machines now that can pick just the ripe fruit from the vine. It can't be too much longer before plastics, metals, glass, etc. can be picked apart as an intermediate step at the landfill.
I have a metric shit ton of smartphones. I've taken all of the "broken" ones the lazy people like you throw away and I fix them for next to nothing. Please, keep being wasteful. Your trash is my treasure!
That's because a "factory reset" isn't a wipe. You CAN wipe a phone like a PC, you just aren't trying hard enough. The equivalent of formatting a PC is to reflash the ROM. You can find many updated ROMS on places like XDA Developers. You're getting old, Grish. You claim to be a super nerd on this site all the time but you've gotten lazy in your old age and are here complaining you want something "that just works" like an old grandpa should. How about you tighten up your suspenders, put your safety glasses on, and hack the bastard like you would have back in 1985. It's the same crotchety argument I hear old farts complaining about "computerized" cars that are too damned hard to work on without an EE degree. Yeah, it's not a carburetor (thank the non-existent gods) but they aren't hard at all, you're just an old dog refusing to learn new tricks. So get with the times or get out. You appreciate that kind of message too because I've seen you type it. Now go ahead and start being a hypocrite.
Taxing the producers will only raise prices of the food we buy. Just be a better shopper. Without looking in the fridge I'm pretty sure all my liquids, such as ketchup and mustard, are in glass containers. Everything except milk because I can't find it in glass close. It takes a little more effort to make that happen. I rotate through three grocery stores and a couple of farmers markets.
China NEEDS their boats to go back full when oil prices are high. As such, they here happy to take resources. At one time, America's recycle stream was done decently. However, that was changed because China was willing to take bad garbage. That killed off the good streams and more importantly, killed off recycling companies in America.
What is needed is to restart recycling in America, and NOT send the goods elsewhere.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We used to have incinerators in the US and contrary to what many people think it is entirely environmentally friendly to burn garbage. They still do it in europe.
The basic idea is to not just burn it but burn it at such a high temperature that there are no toxic fumes, no bad smells, and the solid waste is ash.
Many things can also be burned for a net energy gain. Which means you can generate POWER from garbage. The ash that is left over can be landfilled much more efficiently. And with proper sorting, you don't even need to send it to the land fill. It can used in compost on crops.
If I incinerate plastic at 3000 ~ 5000F degrees then the ash that comes off that is going to be non-toxic and inert.
The Germans have been trying to sell these furnances to the US for years to solve our land fill problem. And it never goes anywhere because the US environmental lobby is composed of fucktards that don't understand that burning garbage isn't bad for the environment. Putting it in a landfill isn't any better. You just can't harness the power very easily. Those methane taps we put on landfills are inefficient. Burn the garbage on reception and you've taken all the energy out of it one day one.
Here some fucktard is going to get upset that I called him a fucktard. You're only upset because you've been lied to your whole life. If more people were honest like me, you'd have long ago accepted your fucktarded status. The solution to burn the garbage.
The bits of the garbage that don't burn... the metals... we can recycle that to some extent. But plastics and paper? Not really.
Recycled plastic and paper are generally not economical.
First, the quality of a recycled paper or plastic product is lower unless you put the recycled plastic/paper through additional refining processes that ultimately cost more than the savings of using recycled material.
Second, producing plastic or paper from source is actually not that expensive in the first place.
To those worried about running out of finite resources... let me make this clear.
1. The oil we use for plastic is a byproduct of producing the fuel. We have to use it to make plastics otherwise we have no other use for it. We "can" crack that byproduct to produce more fuel but it really isn't worth it. It makes more sense to convert that sludge into plastic.
2. Our paper comes from tree FARMS. Those trees and the paper produced from them is as renewable as wheat or rice or potatoes... or fucking broccoli. We're not running out. Ever.
Now metals... steel... copper... aluminum... etc. Recycle that.
Glass? ehmmm.... generally just put it in the land fill. Its just melted sand in the first place. It isn't like we're running low on sand. Crush the glass and bury it. Its non-toxic and inert.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Since recycling is the least-best of the three R's, it might be a good time to look at the other two: Reduce, Re-use.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
That's why when I have bullshit to dump, especially stuff I'm going to get charged to dump, I roll into a nice ritzy McMansion neighborhood (like you probably live in, Mr. No Free Lunch) and I toss it in their yards. They can afford it. If I didn't get charged then maybe I wouldn't do that, so yeah maybe you should make some things free for me or I'll make them cost YOU.
We have machines to do that sorting work. People need jobs. Right there is an opportunity for undereducated folks to get an income. I am with you 100% with paying for this via taxes. To get me, and people like me, to recycle, you are going to have to make it have ZERO impact on my daily routine. I'm not sorting the trash. If you fine me, I'll pay the fine and keep doing what I do. And if you decide to be a smartass about it and make the fee stupidly high or add some kind of legal threat to it, then I'll come dump it in your McMansion neighborhood. I've already played this game. All my waste oil and tires already get tossed in a rich man's hood because I have to pay to throw it away. They can afford it. I technically can but I simply don't want to. I'm already being taxed once- do the goddamned job I am paying you to do and recycle my garbage!
Nice to know! I'll return the favor: In my state (TN) they don't paint lines. The lines are giant rolls of tape. The lane markers are big ol stickers. Super sparkly and reflective. It's very nice.
You can thank thieves for all that bullshit clamshell packaging. And the cereal boxes are thanks to advertisers and logisticians. Boxes stack and stand on their own which is logistically good while it also makes for a nice big billboard for the company to advertise. You'll notice that all the generic cereals that come in plastic bags only get thrown into a big bin or stacked on a pallet. Not very enticing. The ketchup is your fault. Most every chain store in my state sells big ol cans of ketchup. Get one of those and do it yourself. Not only is it cheaper per ounce, but the metal can is actually easier and financially worth it to recycle unlike paper and plastic.
You have to test at about the 20th percentile to be a bean counter.
If you're going to make up BS to insult someone for no reason someone at least make it clever BS. Seriously, who peed in your cereal this morning?
Hint: Because it is difficult to you, doesn't make it difficult.
Cute. Hint: Since you don't know anything about accounting it makes you look stupid when you prove that fact publicly.
Yeah, but that was Memphis, in the South. I'm pretty sure the OP was referring to civilized places, like Northeastern, Midwestern, and Pacific Coast cities where unions aren't demonized, but understood to provide useful functions similar to corporations.
It needs automatic garbage separation Rotterdam has started doing this and it resulted in a 200% increase in efficiency, not 10 or 20, 200%....
I'm not going to separate my own garbage when i know for a fact it's more profitable to automatically separate at the end of the line, the world can go fuck itself with it's stupid containers which net wise don't result in 1 single less truck being on the road pushing out diesel fumes like a madman...
The Metals market has dropped through the floor. All I can say is in CT we send it all to trash to energy plant and the metals come out the bottom. More electricity means less trash around here.....
Paul E. Bahre
Well, you could go to a fast food restaurant and refill it ;)
Maybe we should go back to glass. A thick glass bottle of ketchup could be reused by the packager or distributor. This is how it worked for a long time, before cheap plastics. And it's the way it still works in some developing countries, particularly for beverages--soda, beer, water.
"I just reply to you when I see you spamming Slashdot with your nonsense"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Why'd you agree w/ my points on hosts then? Quoting you here:
"I'm not denying all those things" - by dave420 (699308) on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @11:39AM (#47927435) FROM -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Of course you're not: It's impossible to dispute FACT on HOSTS FILES superiority to other methods!
Since my points of fact in favor of hosts SINGLE FILE native kernelmode faster part show hosts doing more, with less, vs. so-called 'competitors' many part messagepassing + other overheads laden slower usermode FAR MORE COMPLEX 'solutions' doing less than hosts do for more security, speed, reliability, + anonymity online!
I make creating a superior more efficient solution EASIER!
(Which is more than a mere trolling stalking harassing "ne'er-do-well" like yourself could *EVER* manage).
---
"I'm simply pointing out that it takes an AdBlocker to block your spamming"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Then WHY DON'T YOU DO THAT & use 'em? Answer that!
(You stalk/harass me instead!)
I bother you? Use them!
OBVIOUSLY, you don't & you're just a "ne'er-do-well" troll, OR you have "other motivations" (see next):
---
* QUESTION:
DO YOU WORK FOR AN ADVERTISING FIRM, or ARE YOU A WEBMASTER/WEBCODER http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , or ARE YOU A MALWARE MAKER, or ARE YOU AFFILIATED WITH 1 OF MY COMPETITORS?
Answer that!
No, instead as per your usual, you'll avoid every question, or lie!
(You can't EVER "get the best of me" & you know it, witness the above - & their "so-called 'solutions' are INFERIOR TO MINE on TONS of levels, OR YOU'D USE THEM, merely evidencing their stupidity in & of itself via inferior designwork & YOU HAVE BEEN EXPOSED as to your "true motives" in that last link above!)
APK
P.S.=> SEE Dave420 SQUIRM - evasions galore from him will ensue, guaranteed... apk
"I just reply to you when I see you spamming Slashdot with your nonsense"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Why'd you agree w/ my points on hosts then? Quoting you here:
"I'm not denying all those things" - by dave420 (699308) on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @11:39AM (#47927435) FROM -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Of course you're not: It's impossible to dispute FACT on HOSTS FILES superiority to other methods!
Since my points of fact in favor of hosts SINGLE FILE native kernelmode faster part show hosts doing more, with less, vs. so-called 'competitors' many part messagepassing + other overheads laden slower usermode FAR MORE COMPLEX 'solutions' doing less than hosts do for more security, speed, reliability, + anonymity online!
I make creating a superior more efficient solution EASIER!
(Which is more than a mere trolling stalking harassing "ne'er-do-well" like yourself could *EVER* manage).
---
"I'm simply pointing out that it takes an AdBlocker to block your spamming"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Then WHY DON'T YOU DO THAT & use 'em? Answer that!
(You stalk/harass me instead!)
I bother you? Use them!
OBVIOUSLY, you don't & you're just a "ne'er-do-well" troll, OR you have "other motivations" (see next):
---
* QUESTION:
DO YOU WORK FOR AN ADVERTISING FIRM, or ARE YOU A WEBMASTER/WEBCODER http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , or ARE YOU A MALWARE MAKER, or ARE YOU AFFILIATED WITH 1 OF MY COMPETITORS?
Answer that!
No, instead as per your usual, you'll avoid every question, or lie!
(You can't EVER "get the best of me" & you know it, witness the above - & their "so-called 'solutions' are INFERIOR TO MINE on TONS of levels, OR YOU'D USE THEM, merely evidencing their stupidity in & of itself via inferior designwork & YOU HAVE BEEN EXPOSED as to your "true motives" in that last link above!)
APK
P.S.=> SEE Dave420 SQUIRM - evasions galore from him will ensue, guaranteed... apk
"I just reply to you when I see you spamming Slashdot with your nonsense"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Why'd you agree w/ my points on hosts then? Quoting you here:
"I'm not denying all those things" - by dave420 (699308) on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @11:39AM (#47927435) FROM -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Of course you're not: It's impossible to dispute FACT on HOSTS FILES superiority to other methods!
Since my points of fact in favor of hosts SINGLE FILE native kernelmode faster part show hosts doing more, with less, vs. so-called 'competitors' many part messagepassing + other overheads laden slower usermode FAR MORE COMPLEX 'solutions' doing less than hosts do for more security, speed, reliability, + anonymity online!
I make creating a superior more efficient solution EASIER!
(Which is more than a mere trolling stalking harassing "ne'er-do-well" like yourself could *EVER* manage).
---
"I'm simply pointing out that it takes an AdBlocker to block your spamming"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Then WHY DON'T YOU DO THAT & use 'em? Answer that!
(You stalk/harass me instead!)
I bother you? Use them!
OBVIOUSLY, you don't & you're just a "ne'er-do-well" troll, OR you have "other motivations" (see next):
---
* QUESTION:
DO YOU WORK FOR AN ADVERTISING FIRM, or ARE YOU A WEBMASTER/WEBCODER http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , or ARE YOU A MALWARE MAKER, or ARE YOU AFFILIATED WITH 1 OF MY COMPETITORS?
Answer that!
No, instead as per your usual, you'll avoid every question, or lie!
(You can't EVER "get the best of me" & you know it, witness the above - & their "so-called 'solutions' are INFERIOR TO MINE on TONS of levels, OR YOU'D USE THEM, merely evidencing their stupidity in & of itself via inferior designwork & YOU HAVE BEEN EXPOSED as to your "true motives" in that last link above!)
APK
P.S.=> SEE Dave420 SQUIRM - evasions galore from him will ensue, guaranteed... apk
"I just reply to you when I see you spamming Slashdot with your nonsense"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Why'd you agree w/ my points on hosts then? Quoting you here:
"I'm not denying all those things" - by dave420 (699308) on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @11:39AM (#47927435) FROM -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Of course you're not: It's impossible to dispute FACT on HOSTS FILES superiority to other methods!
Since my points of fact in favor of hosts SINGLE FILE native kernelmode faster part show hosts doing more, with less, vs. so-called 'competitors' many part messagepassing + other overheads laden slower usermode FAR MORE COMPLEX 'solutions' doing less than hosts do for more security, speed, reliability, + anonymity online!
I make creating a superior more efficient solution EASIER!
(Which is more than a mere trolling stalking harassing "ne'er-do-well" like yourself could *EVER* manage).
---
"I'm simply pointing out that it takes an AdBlocker to block your spamming"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Then WHY DON'T YOU DO THAT & use 'em? Answer that!
(You stalk/harass me instead!)
I bother you? Use them!
OBVIOUSLY, you don't & you're just a "ne'er-do-well" troll, OR you have "other motivations" (see next):
---
* QUESTION:
DO YOU WORK FOR AN ADVERTISING FIRM, or ARE YOU A WEBMASTER/WEBCODER http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , or ARE YOU A MALWARE MAKER, or ARE YOU AFFILIATED WITH 1 OF MY COMPETITORS?
Answer that!
No, instead as per your usual, you'll avoid every question, or lie!
(You can't EVER "get the best of me" & you know it, witness the above - & their "so-called 'solutions' are INFERIOR TO MINE on TONS of levels, OR YOU'D USE THEM, merely evidencing their stupidity in & of itself via inferior designwork & YOU HAVE BEEN EXPOSED as to your "true motives" in that last link above!)
APK
P.S.=> SEE Dave420 SQUIRM - evasions galore from him will ensue, guaranteed... apk
If that + an unjustifiable downmod are best ya got, just say "apk you won", dave420.
Cereal does need both a cardboard box and a bag!
The cardboard provides physical stability to the product. It prevents crushing of the contents and allows stacking. Also, since shipping is invariably done in square(ish) containers, having the product be approximately square is helpful in that regard.
The bag is necessary because it keeps bugs and moisture out, and the flavour and smell in.
Cereal is NOT a good example of overpackaging.
Bulk foods (with refillable containers) can work and have their place. However they can also be messy and contamination of the product is more of a problem.
In particular, refillable water containers are easy to process. You can either give the container a quick rinse, or even skip the container wash entirely. Any other food container requires a more serious cleaning.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=plasma+garbage+incinerators
dunno bout that but dave420 got his ass paddled by apk http://slashdot.org/comments.p...