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."
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.
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.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, this story actually prompted me to contact the director of our local recycling center to get more information on what, precisely, contamination is and what I can do to help minimize it. Our system is a pre-sort system. I'll grant that before moving to where I now live (recently), I was used to a single sort/commingled system. Having to pre-sort was a bit of a shock, as I'd never lived anywhere that required this. That alone prompted me to contact our local recycling center to get more information, which led to being introduced to the director. So, I feel comfortable contacting him to get more information about this situation and I am looking forward to his response.
Every waste disposal stream has costs.
That is something we must teach kids even from kindergarten, so they will remeber it when they become autonomous consumers (if they are not already...).
The choice is what we're willing to pay to deal with it.
The choices are a) if we are willing to pay b) how much, if yes - since in reality for "a" the answer is always "yes" (even in the most uncivilized societies *some* "waste disposal" *must* be done), civilized societies must choose how much to pay for "waste disposal AND recycling".
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).
If we Greeks can do it, Americans can do it better. I don't believe Americans are so lazy to sort: they just don't know how important is for minimizing the cost of their "waste disposal (AND recycling)" - if they are informed about the issue they will do the right thing (Americans were sensitive about recycling long before we Greeks were).
In Greece we don't sort further than "for dump and for recycling". The major problem in Greece is that gypsies and illegal immigrants... illegaly sort further the "for recycling" bins! The recycling organizations loose the valuable stuff (e.g., aluminum cans) that gets stolen from the recycle bins from them, and they end up with only the less profitable (or unprofitable) "garbage", so it becomes problematic for them to continue operating
That Greek lady mentioned in the /. summary, Valerie Androutsopoulos, is married to some other Greek, Angelos, that, while he is a computer programmer, own some recycling companies, both in Greece and USA. They understand the cost factors for, and how to operate the, recycling business, i hope others can do the society's education for the importance of that business (e.g., teachers - the way it is done in Greece... good values should start from family/school, as early as possible).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
AS a Gypsy all I have to say is if it wasn't free then why was it on the side of the road.
Ha! Usually i don't trust anonymous when they state their ethnicity, but you just wrote the exact answer i got from an actual Gypsy, so... as a Greek i salute you*!
If crime was not your main "job" and you did not had that anti-social behaviour (sorry about that, but as a Gypsy you know what i mean... ) i could support the idea to have Gypsies as the exclusive contractors for any recycling done anywhere based on "cultural rights", just because you Gypries were in the recycling business long before a name existed for that, i.e., for some milleniums!
* an old Greek song (composed and signed by Greeks) titled: crazy Gypsy (where are you going? take me with you!) - just to make our "peace" for that "crime" statement (you know the truth... let's leave libtarded barbarians living inside their ignorance: do you know that the new name for you is "Rom", and "Gypsy" is now something only a racist Greek like me would use? Probably not, but that is what the modern anti-racist "social justice war" brought to you: a new name to define youselves!)
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
I beg to differ. I'd sort, but I'm not going to sort AND pay extra money.
My town has a pretty decent way of handling this - I pay per bag of trash, and they take properly-sorted recyclables for free.
I don't get a fine if I accidentally throw away a glass bottle. I don't get told off for not rinsing out my cans. I don't have any sort of "recycling gestapo" going around inspecting mandatory clear trash bags looking for any excuse to hassle me. They just call anything non-compliant "garbage", and I pay per bag.
I therefore get to personally make the decision whether to pay more or recycle more.
Why do you need a newer Android? Perhaps you are part of the problem.
security, the old one isn't updated anymore.
industry shoves the responsibility of having compromised devices infecting the net on to the customer, with exactly two alternatives: buy the new phone, or stop using phones altogether. clever business.
The way it works here in Norway is that you pay an extra tax when you buy an eventually recyclable item. When you want to get rid of your old washing machine, you can deliver it to anyone selling washing machines ("you sell it, you take it"). Their logistic costs for handling the waste are paid by the taxes paid on new items.
For some items you actually can get the tax back, e.g. for plastic bottles and beer cans. You bring them to the supermarket, feed them to a robot and get a receipt (one dime for small bottles, three for larger ones) and redeem it at the cashier. It's smal enough that people don't mind the extra price, but high enough that you see bums scavenging trash for bottles.
That's the main principle you need to drive home—you make people pay when they want to buy things that they eventually will dispose of, when they have their wallet open, and make them pay nothing extra (or even pay them something) when they recycle it.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Your's is a classic example of hidden external costs. It seems to you like just not recycling is the best option, but in the long run it may cost you more (your taxes have to be used to deal with what isn't recycled, the environment will be damaged, and maybe your health will eventually suffer). If you care about your kids it might cost them even more.
That's why I'm in favour of simply taxing people more to pay for this stuff. People are generally too short sighted to see the benefit to themselves, but tend to be slightly more sympathetic when it's done on a wider scale. Even if they aren't sympathetic, it has to be done for the greater good, like a kid who doesn't want his vaccination shot because it stings for five minutes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Yeah, me too. I think part of the problem with recyling is lack of education. I honestly don't know what actually is and is not ok to put into what...
For example I recently bought a mcdonalds meal...
What about a macdonalds bag? Is that ok to put in the paper?
What about Unused napkins? Used napkins?
What about the 'cardboard' thing the bigmac was in? Is that paper or cardboard or is it just garbage?
Can I recycle the the plastic fork? The little plastic bag the fork came in? or the straw? The plastic lid on the cup?
What about the wax paper cup?
Would I need to wash all these things? or does the recyling processes itself mean that a bit of salad dressing on the fork, or a bit cola on the cup is completely irrelevant?
And what the hell am I supposed to do with a pringles can or the containers Ice Tea powder comes in? The ones with the cardboard cylinder (although maybe some sort of foil coating on it?) plus it has a metal ring at the top lid, and a metal base.
Is the plastic lid recycleable? The ice tea has the #4 recyle symbol on it... but the pringles can doesn't have any symbol that I can see... but surely its recycleable? isn't it?
Should I err on the side of caution, and toss anything I'm not 100% sure of in the garbage, or should i err on the side of recycling?
I think most people, like me, simply don't know the answers to these questions and we make a lot of mistakes we'd avoid because of it.
Glass - rarely cost effective because it requires more energy to recycle than create new. It's also great in a landfill because its inert. Quit wasting energy trying to recycle it.
Paper - ok, then sort into cardboard, print, and "burn".
Metal - best recycling because it takes 1/20th the energy vs new mining, not to mention reducing pollution.
Plastic - burn it with plasma. Seriously. It's never been recyclable. Otherwise it ends up shredded and burned in unfiltered coal fire electrical plants in China.
Recycling has to be cost effective. Otherwise you're just throwing money at a problem that ends up burned in someone's gas tank further down the supply chain.