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."

Comments

The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Overzeetop]

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).

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

The choice is what we're willing to pay to deal with it.

Unfortunately, what we're willing to pay isn't necessarily what we're thinking we're going to pay.

So many hidden fees and charges, it's difficult to get a good cost-analysis.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not that landfills are too cheap, as the title of your comment says. It's that raw natural resources are too cheap. At some point that will change as they become depleted, but for now we still exist in a time where it's cheaper to harvest or extract virgin resources than it is to recycle new, with a few notable exceptions such as aluminum. Until that changes, and it eventually will, but until it does because of the laws of supply and demand and simply economics there is not any force on earth that can make recycling work if the economics are not there.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Gavagai80]

I'm a few blocks from the county dump. Across the street from the dump there's a large undeveloped foresty area.... which is covered in trash and furniture and such that people have dumped there because they don't want to pay the county dump to take their stuff. 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).

A more reasonable solution would be to encourage people to get all their trash and recyclables to a central point by making it free, and then pay whatever we have to as a community via taxes to process it for recycling or disposal. We'd get a much cleaner world that way than we get by pretending we can make everybody responsible.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[kick6]

and most Americans are too fucking lazy to sort

I beg to differ. I'd sort, but I'm not going to sort AND pay extra money. In fact, let's be honest: I'm just not going to pay extra money period. And yes...recycling costs extra where I'm at.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[antiperimetaparalogo]

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).

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[CrimsonAvenger]

I'd sort, but I'm not going to sort AND pay extra money.

Yep. I was pretty diligent about recycling right up till the local government decided that they needed to charge extra for recycling. When they required me to do extra work AND pay extra money for the service, I stopped using the service....

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[peragrin]

Many towns do just a that. You pay a little extra tax and the town has weekly pickup as well as arranging days to pick up other things like furniture or electronics. You find it in towns that are generally clean and cared for.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

AS a Gypsy all I have to say is if it wasn't free then why was it on the side of the road.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[GLMDesigns]

Maybe it's because the jacka$$es in charge don't do the obvious.

1. Separate hazardous waste from the rest.
2. Separate useful compost from the rest.

And then have paper, cans, and bottles all in a third. First things first. Separate the hazardous from the rest.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[BlackPignouf]

It depends on the mentality.
In Germany, you pay the county dump to take your stuff.
In Italy, just a few hundred kilometers away from Germany, the county dump pays you to take your stuff, because they know that nobody would use it otherwise.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Art3x]

I'd sort, but I'm not going to sort AND pay extra money.

Yep. I was pretty diligent about recycling right up till the local government decided that they needed to charge extra for recycling. When they required me to do extra work AND pay extra money for the service, I stopped using the service....

Is it the government that requires you to do extra work and pay extra money, or is it just life?

Recycling takes a certain amount of work. The government may be trying to split it with you. If they did all of the work, maybe the would have to charge even more.

I may be wrong, and someone will certainly say something like that the government is just being greedy or wasteful. But if it were me, I would either investigate it to know for sure or just go with it.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[nitehawk214]

Seems like both of you are just trash talking (pun intended).

Are there any numbers or studies to back up these claims?

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[knightghost]

A good cost analysis is never difficult. A 3 sort recycle also clears everything up - metal, plastic, paper. Glass goes in the garbage and food goes in the compost.

If you want to take that a step further than send all paper and plastic to local plasma furnaces. Heck, they even take dried bio waste such as lawn clippings.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[rhazz]

This might've been insightful if you'd removed "Americans". I'm in a canadian middle-income neighbourhood, and even here we have households who never put out a recycle bin. We have 3 programs here: rigid plastics & metal, paper & cardboard, and compost. It is paid for by taxes, and if it wasn't then many more would opt out. Even the bins are given out for free by the city. Thankfully most people realize that when our city's current dump fills up, it will cost far more to start shipping to the next available site, so diversion is a high priority.

The only non-recycling person I've ever spoken to about it said that she doesn't bother because sorting is too complex - so in my experience the kind of people who don't recycle are mainly just stupid, or have zero sense of community. And I only spoke to her because she had left a TV sitting on her curb for a month, it boggled her mind that such things can't be thrown out in the trash anymore.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[CrimsonAvenger]

Is it the government that requires you to do extra work and pay extra money, or is it just life?

It was definitely the government. I don't have to send a check to life every month for water, sewer, and garbage collection.

Recycling takes a certain amount of work. The government may be trying to split it with you. If they did all of the work, maybe the would have to charge even more.

Then they shouldn't have put the tax to pay for the recycling center on the ballot as a "cost saving measure".

Of course, there's the whole "it's been in contact with food so it's not recyclable" thing too. Which probably, before they ever started, eliminated 75% of the recyclables. But that's another rant....

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[DanJ_UK]

Huh, you mean this isn't standard in the US? When do you get bin collections?

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[antiperimetaparalogo]

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!)

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[bored]

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).

Why the fuck should I have to waste my $100/hour time to sort some goddamn garbage when the city can hire someone for $10/hour to do it?

So get off your high horse about the recycling BS, and charge me another $50 a month or something for trash collection and sort it all manually. I'm totally of the opinion that things that can be reused be removed from the waste stream. I'm just not in favor of trying to educate a million people sufficiently that they don't make mistakes and wasting peoples time doing things that are much better handled by specialists and machines.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[RingDev]

If you live out in the country in the US, you have to take your trash/recycling into a dump or collection site.

The typical approach is that you charge enough extra for trash/dumping that it covers the cost of recycling.

It has the benefits of being self-funding, and it puts a price point on motivating consumers to recycle.

As a GP up the tree pointed out though, the more expensive trash is, the more likely you'll see people illegally dumping. So it's a balancing act of funding recycling without driving off low income citizens to cheaper (illegal) means.

-Rick

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[known_coward_69]

same thing in NYC except it's old asian ladies. one of them is a neighbor on my floor. they live with families and collect recycling for extra money for the family

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you will gain mod points by the anti-American bash, but there are a lot of people out there in the US who demanded their apartment complexes get a recycling stream going. Yes, it could all go into the trash dumpster, but people actually give a shit about the environment in the US, even the hicks.

I live in banjo country, where possessing more than four "pleasure toys" is a felony, while "stump breaking" an animal is the norm and legal.

Even in this area, people recycle. The trailers have the trash bin, and (depending on if the recycler uses single or multi-stream recycling) they have the plastics, aluminum cans, and paper out. Rural roads are surprisingly clean (the "Don't Mess with Texas" campaign seems to still work), and even state parks can be gone to without worry about stepping on broken beer bottles.

In more urban areas, you will -always- find recycling bins. This is both an environmental decision as well as a realistic one, as landfills are filling up fast, and even the hayseeds don't want their kids growing up fat and with small wankers due to BPA.

So, if the hayseeds in Deliverance country grok the concept of recycling and actively do it, it isn't surprising that the rest of the US is far ahead. It may not be as ahead as Europe, but it isn't something where "most Americans are too fucking lazy" to bother with.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Grishnakh]

It's really disturbing if that's the case too, because it shouldn't be that way. Raw materials, when mined, are not refined; you have to not only expend energy to move them to where you need them (frequently across or between continents), but you also have to expend more effort and energy to refine them and turn them into something useful (e.g., from crude oil into high-density polyethylene, a common plastic for food containers). 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. Same goes for aluminum (where the energy needed for refining is very high), steel, glass, etc. And paper too: instead of chopping down lots of trees, just grind up old paper.

So if the economics are favoring using virgin raw materials instead of recycling existing refined materials, we're doing something really wrong.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[dave420]

It's not a "social justice war" to not bandy about racial epithets when there are even more accurate, entirely non-offensive terms. Are you mad you get called a racist for calling people "nigger"? People don't like using "gypsy" because its definition has become corrupted over the decades by people using it to describe any traveller. If you want to talk about Roma people specifically, use the word Roma. That's why it's there.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[pla]

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.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are way out in the country, you burn most of your trash, then only pay to dump what cannot be burnt.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[ranton]

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).

As another post mentions (although a bit rudely), there is no reason why I need to sort my trash myself. Mixed waste recovery facilities can achieve almost 80% landfill diversion rates. One such service in South Pasadena costs under $40 per month, which is the same as standard garbage service in nearby LA.

There is no reason why I should waste my time sorting trash. I don't waste my time vacuuming my own home or landscaping my own house either. I pay professionals to do it who will do it much better and in less time. And for lower cost since I charge my employer a much higher rate.

The only reasons areas like Pasadena and Bevery Hills started mixed waste recovery was because no one was sorting on their own. The only way to force municipalities to start doing sorting the right way is to stop sorting yourself. Just like voting it is unlikely any one person can make a difference, but if everyone felt that way no change would ever happen.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is -where- the sorting is taking place.

Nobody (especially those who live in the city) have 300 sq feet of space to stockpile and sort all the various kinds of plastic, paper, metal, glass and other junk.

I have 4 sq feet dedicated to recycling, and that gets filled with cardboard. I buy all plastic bottles that can be returned and avoid the disgusting tetra-paks (that can be recycled, but are gross as hell to keep around long enough to do so)

Step 1: Instead of having dozens of different kinds of recycling, have just two: Clean recycleables (eg packaging) and Dirty recycleables (food and beverage containers like bottles and cans)
Step 2: Send clean recycleables somewhere to be sorted instead of at the consumers location. Where I live we have just a string of blue bins that all recycleables go in, and it's obvious people don't know the first thing about recycling, as garbage keeps ending up in them. Send dirty recycleables to a pre-sort at the place that you'd normally send landfill type material.
Step 2.5: Sort the dirty recycleables into glass, plastic, metal and cardboard/paper. If the cardboard paper is unusable, send that to the landfill or as fuel for the incinerator.
Step 3: Literately "wash" all non-paper recycleables using greywater
Step 4: Use the water bath to sort the plastic, as the plastic will float.
Step 4.5 Use electromagnets to pull all the steel cans out.
Step 5. That should leave only glass and non-magnetic metal. Crush the glass, and all you should be left with is aluminium, some non-magnetic materials and heavy plastics.

ALTERNATIVE:
Set deposits on all materials, and standardize on (reusable) packaging sizes. No more 20 different sizes of cereal boxes and grocery-shrink-rays.
Deposits on all standard size materials made of glass, metal or plastic. Recycle levys on all other packaging materials.

That puts the onus back on the consumer to buy smart, but the one place this doesn't work is food, and that's where a lot of trash is generated. Packaging that comes in contact with food is garbage. Always.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[znrt]

Every waste disposal stream has costs. The choice is what we're willing to pay to deal with it

we? the cost of disposal should be part of the manufacturing cost. what we are doing wrong is letting corps get away with simply not paying it, albeit making millions in profit.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[antiperimetaparalogo]

You may want to read my reply to an actual (i believe) Gypsy, and mostly what HE wrote!

I understand that many people (especialy those less educated) may think that "since it's in a recycling bin, it's not real theft", but the economics of recycling depend on those aluminum cans staying in the recycling bin - without them there is no point of any recycling business to operate, which means no recycling for the plastics also...

Many people here in Greece tell me that i am too hard (e.g., "you can't expect a poor Gypsy/illegal immigrant to starve himself just because you want recycling to work"), but we must at least use the right term: theft - society can not blame recycling businesses as "greedy" and demand operating, when people don't even want to acknowledge that fact.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Grishnakh]

He could just as easily live in an area full of white trash. I grew up in the South, and white southerners think nothing of throwing trash wherever they want. You can see it with all the yards full of old junked cars and other trash.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[blackanvil]

Mine's free, and cleaner, but if you're trying to recycle, get there early in the morning on Tuesday. After that, the recycling containers are overflowing. According to at least one dump worker I talked to when I had a load of cardboard to recycle, everything but the metals and ewaste, which they can sell, just gets put in the landfill anyway, nobody is buying unsorted glass, unsorted and contaminated paper, or unsorted plastic.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

AS a Gypsy all I have to say is if it wasn't free then why was it on the side of the road.

My car is parked on the side of the road. Do you think it is free, too?

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[mark-t]

The way you make them care about it is to issue fines. Kind of like how you make people care about shoveling their front walkways in the winter... when they don't do it, you fine them.

If the consumer lives in an apartment where garbage cannot be obviously traced to a single dwelling, then the entire complex is fined... this may eventually translate to increased apartment rents for everyone, but the more people do what they are supposed to do, the less likely that is to occur.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you throw away glass? It's easy to recycle that.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Where are you from Sir? I know many Gypsies, everyone calls himself (as self-description) "Gypsy"! I find it at least both comic and tragic to have some (left-wing) "anti-racists" trying to re-define an ethnicity in which they do NOT belong!

Some other old Greek song about "arapines" (magic nights) - the word is about "(sand-)niggers" as a non-Greek may call them offensively, but in Greek (and the rest of the word) it was not "offensive"... until some (left-wing) "anti-racists" decided that it is now! The guy singing the song is a Greek actor, that is also a Greek politician... in a party those (left-wing) "anti-racists" belong also! The ironic fact about the "arapines" word (which you probably read as a word for the first time in your life): arapines use it to describe themselves!!!

Again my question: Where are you from Sir?

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[cyberchondriac]

How is the parent trash talking, he's taking a defensive position.
We've recycled for years, and had one bin for cans and bottles, another for paper and cardboard. Wasn't a big deal to me. Last year though, they gave us a new, larger bin and told us they're not sorting anymore, it all goes in the one. That wasn't our decision, that was the recyclers'.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[znrt]

It's unbelievable that these costs aren't part of the public budget. I'm trying to be a responsible citizen by hauling my large or toxic waste to the proper disposal facility and you won't let me dump it until I pay some hefty fee?

that's actually fair. if you consume/dispose more volume than me, why should i pay for recycling your stuff?

however, i still prefer having this as a regulated public service. most big cities do, afaik.

The next time I'm getting rid of a refrigerator, air conditioner, or other electronics, I'll just leave it in a ditch somewhere.

try harder (to be a responsible citizen) :-)

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[orzetto]

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.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[jandersen]

I don't think so - the real problem is that we produce too much waste, simply. Things are designed to break after a shortish while, or wrapped excessively, or both. Look back at history: only a century ago, most things were expected to last, possibly for generations; but now we are conditioned to think that things like fashion matter, and that it is normal when things just break or stop working. The truth, however, is that the only reason why we produce such obscene amounts of crap, is the idea that our economy must grow, no matter what consequences.

Recycling is wrong - it is the wrong end of the problem, simply.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody is a "waste producer", which is why it makes perfect sense to fund waste disposal through taxation. A more intelligent system would adds fees to behaviors we want to discourage and subsidizes behavior we want to encourage. Now you might say, "we want to discourage people from producing waste, so there needs to be an additional cost for dumping waste". You are targeting the wrong point in the transaction. What you are discouraging is waste disposal, not waste production. We need to put the fees up front, when the decision to purchase something that produces more or less waste is being made. If we want people to recycle and properly dispose of their other waste, we need to provide incentives, not penalties.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Gizan]

the neighborhood i used to live in, we were required to sort paper, plastic, and metal and glass from eachother, only to watch the trash man dump them all back into the same truck... it was a waste of our time...

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[tnk1]

The attitude he has comes off that way, but I think he has a point.

Time is money. You have unemployed people who probably need a job, and you have people who already have jobs and things to do with their time other than sorting trash.

Why don't we give some people some jobs and don't expect every individual in the US to have to get this right when a much smaller group of specialized workers can do it correctly AND keep the recycling programs from falling apart?

Yes, you could make the effort to sort trash, but as a computer programmer would know, sorting is something we have assigned to computers for a reason: it is a deceptively expensive operation that is better done by a dedicated process which uses an algorithm suited to the task. Better to train a few people to carry out an optimized process than try and train everyone to do that process. Although we tend to use computers today for sorting things, sorting trash would seem to be a complex enough task that you'd still want humans on it. And, while not the most desirable job ever, it IS work in an economy where people would like jobs.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Megane]

I was perfectly happy with having a second bin to put just paper/cardboard in, and the old recycling truck also had a separate bin for paper. I even have a pile in the corner of the back yard where I dump my leaves every year (a no-maintenance compost pile) and put what little wet garbage I produce on that.

But then the greenie-weenies (this is Austin TX, the first place that California's silly ideas appear) just had to have their single-stream recycling and goals of recycling an absurd portion of trash. So now I have a second enormous wheelie-bin (along with my enormous trash wheelie-bin) for recyclables. And to make it all more fun, now they only collect recycling every other week, and I have to look on a calendar to see if there's recycling this week.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[danbert8]

Exactly, the triangle goes Reduce -> Reuse -> Recycle, but everyone wants to focus on the last one... I guess it's because we've been sold on the idea that spending and consuming is what drives the economy. If we reduced, it would cause a great depression/recession/slowdown, etc. If we reused, we are basically putting people out of work right?

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Gizan]

we can recycle a lot of stuff in my town, but not pizza boxes, because they MIGHT have grease on them...

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Megane]

Soda can aluminum isn't just aluminum, its a special alloy of mostly aluminum that is optimized for the can stamping process. So it's worth more than plain aluminum. I figured out that they pay about 2-3 cents a can at recycling centers. And that's in a state that doesn't have a bottle deposit tax. On my way to work in the morning, which is near a recycling center, I often seen people walking along the street with two or three enormous five-foot tall garbage bags full of cans (presumably un-crushed or they'd be too heavy for a bag that size).

Also, tell me that simply melting cans down isn't easier and cheaper than electrolytically ripping the aluminum atoms out of the ore with lots of heat and electricity. Seriously, aluminum atoms like to bond with shit very tightly. Before we had that, aluminum was a rare metal on par with silver, even though it's one of the most common elements in the earth's crust.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[denguydj]

While we don't have to sort it.... We have to wash every single piece to recycle it. We also have to buy a special trashcan, with a special blue lid, and only picked up on special days. (the pick up is not extra where i live the cost of the special trashcan is 200$) While we do recycle aluminum thats it. the rest gets thrown out just because its such a hassle. I also am gone 40% of the time i dont have time to wash every bit of trash i make.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[gbjbaanb]

Its not quite that simple.

Glass - really easy to recycle, we have even been doing this for decades in the UK. Only thing is, you have to sort it by colour first or it cannot be recycled, except as glass that is used in non-consumer areas.

Metal: easy to recycle, ferrous material is even easier as a big magnet can sort it. The rest is basically aluminium from drinks cans.

Paper: can be easy, but not if its contaminated with plastic (eg windowed envelopes) or plastic (coated to make it shiny). Even then, there's a limited recycling cycle for it, but it can still be burned in the end.

Plastic: now we get a problem. There are so many different types, (you can see them on your products by looking for the number inside the recycle triangle). Then there's problems with the colours - put black plastic in with the rest and it can only be turned into more black plastic. The prices for most plastic is so low that its often cheaper to just chuck it in the garbage.

Ultimately sorting at source is the only option to make recycling cost effective (and even then, if one neighbour decides to stuff his rubbish in the recycling bin, none of the lorry load that collected it gets used).

Round here, we do plastic in bags; metal, paper and glass in bins. I used to live in a place where you could put the latter 3 in a single bin as sorting that was relatively easy, but they didn't take plastic at all.

There are ways to encourage recycling like we used to do: community groups could collect things like paper, you'd store them until a church or scout group would turn up to collect bundles of one type of material (say, papers) where they would take them to be recycled and possibly even get paid for them as the bundles would be properly sorted and thus worth a lot more, or you could just put a penny deposit on glass or metal that could be refunded on return.

BTW, Ars had an interesting tour of a recycling centre:

http://arstechnica.com/science...

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[DanJ_UK]

Wow, even the most remote / rural coastal islands in the UK have a national mail service and rubbish collection :-/

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[vux984]

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.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Lord Ender]

You can't make something expensive "free," but you can force people to pay for something they wouldn't voluntarily pay for via taxes.

By taxing goods up front proportionally to their reclamation costs (and the costs of their packaging) we could fund "free" recycling and even encourage manufacturers to adopt more environmentally-friendly designs.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[knightghost]

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.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Grishnakh]

Now compare that to going into the woods to cut down some trees that you can mold into uniform planks and then construct the shed from those.

Apples and oranges. We're not talking about reusing wood, or reusing anything in fact, we're talking about recycling. Reuse and recycling are two different things; reuse is when you take something already made and just use it again, either as-is or with some modifications. Recycling is where you create new materials from old materials, such as melting down old steel and creating new steel from it. You're talking basically about reuse. You can't really recycle wood, for the reasons you point out. You can try to reuse it, but with limited success usually. Some people have had good success reusing old wood (like from barns), re-milling it, and using it for other woodworking projects, usually at a much smaller scale. An example is taking apart an old barn and using the wood to make some tables. For a barn, you'd prefer big, long boards so there's fewer joints. For a table, you don't need anything that large, and you use glue and joinery to put it together anyway.

With plastics, the idea is you grind it up (after separating it into different plastic types, like HDPE, LDPE, or polypropylene) into pellets, and use these for making new things just like you'd use virgin plastic pellets. You probably don't want to use it for food containers, but you can use it for other stuff like park benches where a bit of contamination isn't a big problem.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[hey!]

The question is how easy is it for you to avoid paying for disposal, and if you don't pay for it, who does?

People trying to get someone else to pay for their trash undermine every approach to deal with the problem of waste to some degree. If everyone complied with the rules you could just charge whatever rate recycling costs are and whatever the true costs of landfills are (as determined by our honest politicians). Then you'd rely upon rational economic behavior to guide consumers to an optimal choice.

But too many people would prefer to foist the cost of disposal off on their neighbors; and our politicians of course prefer to foist the costs of disposal onto their successors. As a practical matter this means any solution we choose will fall short of Utopia.

My non-utopian solution would be to tax virgin material content. Retailers would simply weigh an item plus packaging, multiply that by the fraction of virgin content and add that to the price of the item. The proceeds would then underwrite the purchase of raw, unprocessed recyclable materials. The rationale for this idea isn't that it's perfectly fair, or optimal; only that it'd work better than a solution that is perfectly fair and optimal provided practically everyone is perfectly honest.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Ravaldy]

Then have them pay up front. You want to buy a TV. Here's a $30 charge on top of the cost of the television for disposal. You buy a box of K-CUP, here's a $0.15 per cup eco fee. Same goes for any consumables.

Consuming isn't a right, it's a privilege and if we want to keep it we have to invest in the cycle of life for these materials or we can do like we also do and wait until it's a much more difficult problem to resolve.

I think charging upfront is probably the easiest means to solving the budgeting issue and cause consumer/manufacturer to adjust.

Asking people to sort materials is pointless. It didn't work before and it won't work now. A better strategy would be to entice manufacturers to find better packaging solutions. I look at the K-CUP shit and it makes me mad. Same goes for water bottles. Most people I see are just to damn lazy to carry around a reusable water bottle (it's too inconvenient). Well guess what, double the price of water bottles and all of sudden there's an incentive to use the reusable bottles.

At the end of the day the only way to change consumer behavior is to have it impact their pocket book. This usually causes people to adjust their ways and companies to become more innovative.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Ravaldy]

The tax should be on the consumables. Tax the consumer. The bigger the consumer the bigger the tax paid.

E.g.:
Bananas would have $0 if not pre-packaged
Canned goods: $0.05 (Metal is a desired material)
Television: $30 (that's already in place where I live)
K-CUP: $0.15 per cup
Water bottle: $0.15 per bottle

These are just suggestions with the exception of the Television.

There are many ways to tackle this but forcing consumers to pay up front is the best way to deal with it. We could get into deposits and other but that's a logistical nightmare.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Spazmania]

The problem is that mixed paper is worth less than the cost to collect and recycle it. Cheaper to plant trees and bury used paper. Though the article only alludes to it with "dual stream recycling," the rest of the materials on their own (glass, plastic, metal) recycle profitably.

"Source sorting" consumes vastly more manpower than the mechanized sort at the recycling center. That manpower has a cost either way. Even if you coercively steal the manpower, that doesn't make it free.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[JonnyCalcutta]

For now.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[BitZtream]

Heh, you've been conned.

The problem is simply cost for me versus profit for them. Recycling facilities are a rip off. They charge me to take my recycling, they make me clean it and sort it, if I don't do that, they won't take it. Then ... then they turn around and sell it. Thats a GREAT business. People pay them for everyhthing they do. Other than buying some land and equipment, all other aspects of their business PAY them.

Its like going to a restaurent where not only do you pay for you meal, but the farmer pays for the privilege of providing the raw food to them! Any farmer contributing to that business would be considered a complete and total moron, yet you've been convinced that not doing so makes you lazy or don't care. Perhaps its just that we're not all as stupid and mindless trend followers as you?

Recycling isn't 'in the red'. Its just not ridiculously popular anymore now that people have stopped following the 'trendy' part of it. The only way it ends up 'in the red' is when you use hollywood accounting.

You aren't going to get people to recycle when it costs more to do so than it does to put something in the dump.

You're going to have a hard time convincing any person with a clue to pay for recycling when they try to convince you that it costs more to recycle than it does to dig it out of the ground. If thats the case then I'm going to throw it all in the dump, then in a few years, I'll just mine the dump and make a killing off it since its all concentrated in one location.

You will never in your life get me to pay for recycling. Thats just stupid. I will not pay someone to take my stuff and sell it and make more money from it. Thats REALLY FUCKING STUPID.

If this was about the environment, we wouldn't be discussing money at all. If you pay for recycling, your getting ripped off and not bright enough to realize it. Do something about the bribes your politicians are taking and maybe you'd stop having to line other peoples pockets just to keep some soda cans out of the ground.

You don't recycling items that have no value, only things that do have value, yet you think its worth paying them to take it. Absolutely astonishingly stupid.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[bigman2003]

Ha ha ha...this is actually closer to reality than you might think.

In California, we charge a fee/tax everytime you buy electronic stuff. Screens, computers, etc.

Then, when it is time to dispose of this material, recyclers get paid by the state. "Here are 200 screens, now please give me my recycling deposit back." This is mainly done by recyclers- I don't think individuals can get their money back.

The problem comes when recyclers from Nevada/Arizona (neighboring states) bring in truckloads of e-waste, just to get the deposit fees.

It happens. So California is paying these people to drop off junk that the state doesn't even want.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[ranton]

Do you pay somebody else to run your washing machine, too?

About half of our laundry is done by my wife, and the other half by a service. They come by every Thursday morning and pick up the clothes and drop them off on Friday morning. My wife has trouble trusting our infant's clothes / bedding and our non-dry clean but still delicate work clothes to a service so that is why we still do some laundry.

I don't waste my time vacuuming my own home

Wow, you ARE lazy.

I work 50 hours a week at my full time job, another 15 hours or so on side-projects after my daughter and wife are asleep, and spend close to 100% of the rest of the time with my daughter and wife (and friends and family, but usually with my wife and daughter). Every hour I would spend vacuuming or doing laundry is an hour I wouldn't spend crawling around chasing my daughter, playing peekaboo, and reading Olivia the pig.

Every load of laundry I don't do is virtually the same as giving someone $10 for an extra half hour with my daughter. Money well spent. I doubt I will sit on my death bed worrying I didn't spend enough time vacuuming and too much time with my family.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Do you ever have a comment that doesn't proclaim your living in Greece?

Yesterday i made i comment about the new Linux kernel, where i did not mentioned my nationality (i did not thought it was relevant) - but in this story about recycling the Slashdot summary mention a Greek lady, which is maried to a Greek guy that has recycling companies in both Greece and USA, plus... you, instead of replying in that comment, you choose to reply in a comment about Gypsies!

I mean really, part of the point of the web was to break down the nationalistic mentality, and your response is to scream about Greece and ask everyone `where are you from.' It's gotten really tiresome.

All the comment i made in this story started from "Score 0" (baaad /. karma... don't ask!), all up-modded, even to "5 Interesting", and: you reply to a comment i made as a reply to someone trying to teach me how Guypies are called, even while i personaly know Gypsies that are call themselves... Gypsies! Even a Gypsy made a comment as a reply to me where he calls himself... Gypsy! It is abvious to me that the guy does not know shit about the matter (probably because he lives somewhere without Gypsies?), but he feels he is an expert in the issue: and the issue in question is "nationalistic"! Well, i think that "part of the point of the web" IS to communicate with people of different cultures/nationalities - take this chance and ask me about Greeks/Europeans and even Gypsies... but please: don't complain about mentioning my nationality (out of cultural honesty) in a sub-discussion about nationalities...

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[adonoman]

This is the critical short-fall in over-emphasizing the individual right. It's not merely short-sightedness. Each individual can be perfectly rational in not doing the extra work to sort recycling, as there is almost no benefit to them to do so, and essentially no harm if they don't - in fact if recycling is charged for, then there is a loss for them to recycle. From that point of view, one would be foolish to recycle.
However, on a large scale, it's a benefit to each individual if everyone recycles, so it's again rational to vote for measures that force everyone to pay for recycling through taxes, and to fine people for not sorting recycling.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[ceoyoyo]

I'm not American, but I generally get the feeling most Americans don't like paying more taxes, not even to fund things like getting the unemployed to sort their garbage for them.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[adonoman]

That seems like a surprisingly reasonable way to do things. It would be great if more communities would follow that example.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Solandri]

The problem is that landfills are too cheap. Every waste disposal stream has costs. The choice is what we're willing to pay to deal with it.

No, landfills being cheap is only a factor if recyclables have negative value (i.e. you had to pay recyclers to take your recyclables, just as you pay them to take your trash). If that's what you believe, then it's tantamount to admitting we shouldn't be recycling.

The premise behind recycling has always been that it's cheaper to harvest raw materials from recyclables than it is to mine/manufacture new ones. That is, recyclables have positive value, and it's higher than for mined raw materials. If this isn't true, then our best strategy is actually either (A) stop recycling and give up on the idea, or (B) to separate out recyclables and dump them into a parallel landfill. In the future when mining/refining raw materials becomes more expensive, it will then become cost-effective to mine those recyclables landfills.

If you want to shortcut this process, then start charging a deposit for recyclable materials. This is already done in many places for cans and bottles - you pay a little extra when purchasing the new can or bottle, and you get the money back when you turn it in for recycling. Although in that case it's mostly done to prevent these items from ending up as trash on the streets.

Also standing in the way are many plastics (thermosets) and rubber (tires) not being easy to recycle. And goods being produced from certain recyclables like paper being inferior to new (even the Sierra Club prints its calendars on non-recycled paper because it's whiter), thus its market being much smaller than the original market - mostly cardboard and egg cartons. Incentives and regulations to encourage manufactured materials to be more recyclable, and R&D into better means of recycling helps here.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[tnk1]

Yes and no. It depends on how it is presented. Obamacare was supposed to be supported by either currently uninsured people joining the pool, or people paying a fee for not being insured. Of course, the "fee" is a tax, but that tends to get overlooked by most. (Except it was saved by the Supreme Court specifically because they ruled it a tax.)

Not to mention that a trash "fee" would be a fairly progressive tax. If you don't have a lot of stuff, you're not going to have a lot of stuff to throw away. Many places, trash is hauled by private companies, and they would pass a tax on as a fee. People complain about bills like that, but it is easier to sneak taxes in that are simply passed on by trash companies.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[PenguinJeff]

Because its hard to automatically sort out? Maybe? My guess. They do that here. Because I believe in recycling I take glass every once in a while to a glass recycler. I still throw out most leftover food that is beyond eating. Fresh vegetable matter and egg shells gets composted but we are worried about putting some food in the compost. I think recycling is important. If packagers made it easier it would get much better.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[ottothecow]

Just FYI re step 5: they already have machines that sort out aluminum cans using eddy currents.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[RyoShin]

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.

Many states here in the US have the same kind of program, but often they're aimed at sugary drinks instead of recycling (so a bottle of soda will have that tax, but not a bottle of water, which I always found odd). It's not nation-wide, though, and some states that are more "outdoorsy" like Colorado don't have a Return system.

I personally like such systems, and wish that all states would implement them.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[znrt]

well, why i can see the value for society of kids going to school (kind of), i can't see any in promoting crazy consumerism just because we're ready to solidarily pay extra for disposal. that's not a benefit, but a disgrace (and a shitty education btw).

my (somewhat stretched) point tried to respond to someone seemingly 'refusing to pay'. the reason for a public service is not for someone getting to dump fridges for free, but to ensure a proper disposal process everywhere.

this of course has a cost which should not be invisible, and it shouldn't mean that just because society pays for you are free to buy and dump whatever you want. in fact, it would be just fair that the very moment a manufactured product exited the production chain the manufacturer had already paid for its disposal as part of the production cost.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[slimjim8094]

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.

[citation needed]. I'd always understood (from watching programs where glass was recycled) that it was much less energy to melt existing glass and re-form than it was to combine new ingredients, which requires a higher temperature. Wikipedia agrees: "The processing and use of recycled glass in manufacturing conserves raw materials, reduces energy consumption, and reduces the volume of waste sent to landfill." I assume you're talking about total process energy consumption, but yeah I'd like to see evidence. (You also seem to assume that reducing the waste load on landfills isn't a benefit in and of itself.)

I'd always understood that some plastics were recyclable as well, but generally "downgraded" - a soda bottle becoming polyester fabric, etc.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Bringer128]

Glass - It's not financially worth it to make new bottles with glass anymore. In my local council (in Australia) it is crushed and recycled for roadbase so you don't need to sort it by colour anymore.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Bringer128]

Plastic is quite easy to recycle nowadays. In Australia most supermarkets have contracts with soft plastic recyclers to recycle returned plastic bags. Any hard plastics are recyclable into many things. I've seen quite a few examples of easy-to-maintain faux wood products like railings etc. that are made from recycled hard plastic.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[LessThanObvious]

Landfills are free to the manufacturer, they aren't the ones dealing with disposal.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[gbjbaanb]

plastic is easy to recycle generally melt it down but... it depends opn the types. You cannot recycle "plastic" if you have a heap of plastic that is a mix of HDPE and Polystyrene, not unless you sort it into 2 distinct heaps first.

And that's the problem. Sorting is hard as one white bottle can look much the same as another white bottle made with a different type. Maybe they could legislate that all plastic goods are easily marked in some way (like coloured insert or large area of special texture that varies by type), but otherwise you're going to have to sort it expensively.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Bengie]

The prices for most plastic is so low that its often cheaper to just chuck it in the garbage.

Many places around here are starting to tax plastic bags in an effort to curb their usage.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[Stan92057]

Ya know that a pure excuse, we get 2 containers 1 for recycle 1 for non so please explain sort? to what? We only have 2 containers all the recycle going into 1 and cleaning? They can do that for a ton cheaper at a recycle center using recycled water for crying out loud. Hay i have an idea, lets outsource our cleaning of recycling maybe to Cuba........wait how about prison prisoners? Wont be taking jobs out of Americans mouths they would be outsourced or import Mexican workers to get it done cheaper higher profit margins anyways. twenty different kinda of glass colors,clean cardboard,clean newspapers,product plastics in hundred of different shades ya blame us lazy Americans sure we can take it.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[carbonates]

You have hit on one of the biggest problems, and one that I never understood. Municipal recycling typically makes almost zero effort to educate people about what and how to recycle. In the days when you had to take your recycling to a recycling center, and there were people there to examine your recyclables and supervise your sorting, most people got some education on what was recyclable.

Now there is one big blue bin for everything. I have seen people throw in food containers with food still in them (this becomes garbage, not recycling), plastic bags (not recyclable at most facilities), and all sorts of plastics. I've even seen computers put in the recycling bin. Plastic spoons? They are made of styrene, which is the same plastic as expanded styrene foam (Styrofoam) and not generally recyclable (some places take it). Wax paper cups and wax containers for milk or juice are generally not recycled, but some places have started.

People do not realize that there are a bunch of minimum wage humans manually sorting their recycling on a conveyor belt at the recycling center. They also don't realize that if they contaminate the whole load with a broken jar of syrup, the whole load just goes to the dump. Wet paper, food, misidentified plastics, all of that can make the whole load go to the dump instead of being recycled, and yet the recycling collectors make no effort to get the public to sort for them. Maybe they know the public is just too damn lazy and too ignorant to understand those numbers on plastics to actually sort stuff.

Then to compound the problem there are folks like me who know what can be sold for money and what can't, and the valuable items are things I sell, rather than donate to the trash company to sell.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[kenwd0elq]

Penn & Teller had a great segment on "BULLSHIT!" about recycling. Like most of their stuff, they started with a "reasonable" approach and expanded it to the realm of "ridiculous".

The problem is that recycling costs money, and doesn't really save the environment. We aren't running out of landfill space; at worst, we're running out of landfill space that's a short driving distance from big cities.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[aurizon]

The only way to promote recycling is to transfer the city cost to the consumer. We are used to can and bottle deposits. If we made more packaging material carry a cash deposit (of the right amount to motivate people to return for the $$, but not enough to make it practical to manufacture fake corn flakes boxes etc)

This would create a logistics nuisance as all these sellers would have to deal with the volume of returns, but that is the price we need to pay to start to solve the problem.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[david_thornley]

I generally think of your mention of your nationality as something between an identifying tagline and a running gag. I don't find it a problem.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[rpstrong]

The problem comes when recyclers from Nevada/Arizona (neighboring states) bring in truckloads of e-waste, just to get the deposit fees.

It happens.

It may happen, but it isn't legal - from EWasteRegulations:

(1) Only CEWs resulting from a California source are eligible for recovery, recycling, or manufacturer payments.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[hucker75]

In the UK, we sort our recycling. I have 5 containers collected from my home between 1 and 3 weekly.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[sysrammer]

Here it's a dime for any bag, paper or plastic. The wife generally brings her cloth bags shopping, and I always forget. In that case, if I can choose I'll go plastic because I find them very useful for lining a small trash can or other utility purposes.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[shutdown -p now]

Some places around here are banning plastic bags in stores outright.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[sysrammer]

You may want to read my reply to an actual (i believe) Gypsy, and mostly what HE wrote!

Well, what your "Gypsy" wrote, was an AC being a smartass. Let's try to keep the stereotypes to a lower level on this site.

we must at least use the right term: theft

Ok, you made your point. I too have (fill in ethnic stereotype here) coming around at night poking through the trash. As long as they don't make a mess I'm not going to go out there and chase them off. "There but for the grace of God go I", etc. I do understand that it can hurt the economics of the local recycling business. I don't really know how to resolve the issue without being draconian.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[sysrammer]

I agree, those are the basic categories, and should be communicated to all (yes, I know it should be common sense, but...).

Frankly, when we went to single stream, I rejoiced in it. I had assumed that many of the problems stated in these posts had been taken care, and I'm dismayed that they aren't, or are causing other problems.

Like other posts I've seen here, I feel my utility should do a better job of explaining the issues.

Technology can fix some of these problems, but are more expensive. One thought I have is that, while expensive now, if some of these technologies are good and useful, the prices will come down. And when they do, we'll sell them to the rest of the world.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[shutdown -p now]

Hereabouts (remote outskirts of a large metro area), we do get bin collections, but we are billed for it directly, not through taxes. There does seem to be some regulation in place to encourage recycling - they charge separate fees for bin rental and for service separately on each bin, depending on the size, but they're not allowed to charge for the recycling bin, only for the service (and it does not depend on the size of the bin).

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[antiperimetaparalogo]

You may want to read my reply to an actual (i believe) Gypsy, and mostly what HE wrote!

Well, what your "Gypsy" wrote, was an AC being a smartass. Let's try to keep the stereotypes to a lower level on this site.

To be honest i believe now that this "Gypsy" was just a smartass. Why i do believe that? Because you know: "Gypsy-Slashdot"...! Stereotypes (a Greek word by the way) "just work" - i understand your good advise, but... (from the same "Gypsy" discussion)

we must at least use the right term: theft

Ok, you made your point. I too have (fill in ethnic stereotype here) coming around at night poking through the trash. As long as they don't make a mess I'm not going to go out there and chase them off. "There but for the grace of God go I", etc. I do understand that it can hurt the economics of the local recycling business. I don't really know how to resolve the issue without being draconian.

Unfortunately, this problem is solved only by being draconian - i understand the drama of any "Jean Valjean", but when you have my fellow Greeks telling me that "the poor Gypsies/illegal immigrants must live also", and in the same time accuse the recycling businesses as "greedy"... we must at least use the right term: theft.

Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap

[sydbarrett74]

The answer to that is extraction/mining taxes. Internalise the very real costs of mining, forestry, et cetera -- disruption/displacement of communities, noise, pollution.

Shipping trash to China is not recycling

[Anonymous Coward]

What a surprise! Shipping trash to China is *not* "recycling". If those trash were actually worth recycling, then do it within your borders.

Re:Shipping trash to China is not recycling

[jonnyj]

What a surprise! Shipping trash to China is *not* "recycling". If those trash were actually worth recycling, then do it within your borders.

If China recycles the shipped trash, surely it is recycling? If China is reluctant to allow unsorted recycling through its ports, presumably some other nation will step in, do the sorting and ship the sorted materials to China. Their workers will benefit from gainful employment, and, if that pushes up China's manufacturing costs, US based manufacturers may have an opportunity to purchase cheap raw materials and gain a competitive advantage. That's how markets work.

Re:Shipping trash to China is not recycling

[sysrammer]

One man's shit is another man's stuff. - paraphrased Carlin

Your stuff is shit, and my shit is stuff.

Incineration

[DigiShaman]

Just burn the stuff for energy. It's better than letting it pile up and getting into our oceans.

Reduce, Reuse...Incinerate.

Re:Incineration

[silas_moeckel]

Shh dont try and make sense the eco warriors will get you. Hartford, CT is a bit of the poster child for this, they separate out what they can automaticly and burn the rest for electricity.

Re:Incineration

[Smidge204]

More specifically, burn paper but not the plastic.

Paper is a renewable resource, and it doesn't make as much sense financially or environmentally to recycle it. It's also the major constituent of landfills. Fix up the supply side of the paper industry - switch from wood pulp to some other, easier to grow feedstock (switchgrass, hemp, etc...) - and close the carbon cycle by burning it. You recover the energy and reduce the volume of the remaining waste.

Plastics are harder to justify burning, IMHO. The materials needed aren't entirely renewable and they more often contain additives that don't play nice when incinerated.
=Smidge=

Re:Incineration

[fortfive]

The energy return on incineration is dubious. Most, if not all, incinerators use additional fuel (oil or natural gast) to get the thing to burn at all, and often, if not always, the energy return is so low it ends up costing more than just burning the supplemental fuel.

This is not to say that incineration is not a useful option for waste disposal in some circumstances. But it's disingenuous to promulgate the process with promises of a net energy gain.

Re:Incineration

[gstoddart]

My municipality tried this whole incinerating thing.

The short version: the technology wasn't up to the task, the amount of energy they got out of it was woefully inadequate, the company went out of business.

Incineration technology just doesn't sound like where it needs to be, and it doesn't produce energy in a way that is worth actually doing.

It may be a good idea in theory, but in practice, I don't think it works very well.

Re:Incineration

[dj245]

My municipality tried this whole incinerating thing.

The short version: the technology wasn't up to the task, the amount of energy they got out of it was woefully inadequate, the company went out of business.

Incineration technology just doesn't sound like where it needs to be, and it doesn't produce energy in a way that is worth actually doing.

It may be a good idea in theory, but in practice, I don't think it works very well.

Without having the whole story, I will say this- power plants should be designed by power plant engineers. Many of the smaller power plants out there which burn %byproduct or %unwanted_materials are not designed by people who design power plants. There are a lot of Engineering/Procurement/Construction (EPC) companies out there who think "we did a recycling facility before, we put in some gas compressors and diesel engines at that landfill on the other side of town to burn landfill gas, a steam power plant is no problem!".

But solid fuels are a lot more tricky to combust compared to gas. They are trickier to design transport for- conveyor systems that don't have inherent blockage points are an art and a science. The ash is also a solid, but very corrosive, abrasive, and toxic, and needs special conveyors. Pollution controls are a whole 'nother science and improperly designed systems won't stay operating long without serious problems. The owner doesn't know all this, however, and doesn't have the experience to know that they should be rejecting some bidders for lack of experience. They go for the lowest reasonable bid and then when things don't work, the EPC finds every excuse under the sun on why they couldn't possibly have known better.

Re:Incineration

[NotDrWho]

Well, I guess we evil humans had better just all commit suicide then, to return Mother Gaia to her glory.

Tell you what, since you've pointed out this obvious conclusion, we'll give you the honor of going first.

Re:Incineration

[Mashiki]

Oh please. We've been doing this in Canada for 80 years and have figured out how to make profitable treefarms with a 10 year harvesting rotation. This is even more so true since we have a serious problem with pine beetles in parts of our western forests, just like in the US. The difference is here in Canada we'll cut it down and make something out of it, in the US you're too busy worrying about xyz something, and then wondering why you have massive forest fires.

Re:Incineration

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just a bald lie; yellow pine is getting more per acre now than it did 50 years ago, which is a hell of a lot more than 200 years ago.

Re:Incineration

[dave420]

It all depends how you do it. Plenty of environmentalists applaud sensible refuse-burning power plants & community heating projects. If you just stick it in a field, cover it with gas, light it, and try to generate electricity from that, of course environmentalists would complain. You'd probably complain too if it was near you.

Re:Incineration

[dave420]

It seems you might want to do some reading, as you yourself are perpetrating a pervasive, incorrect narrative.

Re:Incineration

[Smidge204]

Harvesting the cellulose source is so destructive to the growth matrix that yields per time and yields per acre have been steadily decreasing for the last 500 years

What on earth are you talking about? Stock growth (trees that can be harvested) per acre have been growing for decades.

Further, to grow sufficient volume to supply current paper needs would require a serious imposition on food growing lands

Show your work.
=Smidge=

Re:Incineration

[AmiMoJo]

I live near a rubbish burning facility and it sucks. Massive amounts of dust and ash since it opened. When they run the thing you get a fine layer of black ash over everything left outside.

It is possible to do it properly, but often it's done badly. People who object have probably just seen how bad it was elsewhere.

Re:Incineration

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's disingenuous to promulgate the process with promises of a net energy gain.

You mean like every single recycling program ever?

Right now, I'm laughing and crying at the same time. My municipality just implemented a new single stream recycling plan. We already had multi stream recycling. It wen like this:

A couple of years ago, the municipality sent out a very specifically worded survey or citizen waste disposal needs and desires. I said, this is weird. Being teh cynic, I said, we're about to see our waste disposal charges jump.

A year later, a new program was announced and up for vote. It was full overhaul. Single stream recycling, all new natural gas and hybrid trucks with automated bin dumping, new giant wheeled collection bins... It was going to be so much better, recycle so much more and COST LESS!

I said, wait a minute! That makes no sense. How can it possibly cost less with such a huge initial capital expenditure and supposed labor savings form reduced collection people was simply being moved to sorters. How can this save? This is a scam. Someone is setting themselves up to make a fortune at the citizens expense.

They all said, STFU AC! You don't understand green magic. The recyclables will be sold off for profits and the municipality can only benefit. Profit is assured. The environmental factors alone make it worthwhile, It's a no brainer. It's a win win. Vote passed easily.

Two years later, old trucks are still on the road(so much for the carbon emission savings) because new natural gas trucks have clearance issues and more. Automated collection truck breakdown rates are through the roof. Repair costs are way up. Automated trucks still have at least two men(there goes the labor cost savings) due to endless other issues with automated collection including significantly increased time. Time is also an issue due to increased need for refueling and longer periods needed for refueling. That means more trucks so that garbage doesn't start piling up in the streets. Sorting facilities require twice as many sorters and are costing 70% more to operate than anticipated. "No one" can determine if electrical generation is break even or an operating loss(either is OK with me) despite clear evidence that it is a significant loss. Taxes for collection have increased and are getting ready to increase again and the carriers are raising hell about wages and getting ready to strike.

Now this story comes out. I LOLed, I cried.

Re:Incineration

[cyberchondriac]

Don't worry, tree Neo will enter the growth Matrix and break the cycle.

Re:Incineration

[fortfive]

Nothing in the report you link refutes what I say. That report inventories stocks, but makes no statement on yield per acre per time, or growth rates over time. It does conclude that overall volume of tree stocks are growing on a per region basis, but indicates this growth is due to decreased harvest, not increased growth rates.

Re:Incineration

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue with massive forest fires has to do with climate. Foest fires are mostly in the west. The northern US Midwest, much more similar to the climate of much of Canada never has forest fires.

Re:Incineration

[ceoyoyo]

That's not entirely true. Apparently many forests, especially in the US, are time bombs because the natural burn cycle has been interrupted by humans. Dead trees and underbrush pile up faster than they decompose and you end up with a forest that becomes more and more of a fire hazard. That was the conclusion of the US national forest service, anyway.

Properly planned burns are the best way to deal with the problem, but responsible harvesting can also help a lot.

Re:Incineration

[Mashiki]

Yep and you've swallowed a line of bullshit so tasty, you don't even realize it's shit. There's plenty of historical evidence along with scientific evidence that particular area also experiences wildfires and they've been disrupted by humans. Meaning you're sitting on a tinderbox.

Re:Incineration

[Smidge204]

The data shows that growth has increased despite harvesting has increased or remained virtually the same over the past ~60 years. The overall volume of tree stocks has VERY CLEARLY been growing for both soft and hard woods.

And you still need to substantiate your claim that we'd need to sacrifice food production to grow enough paper.
=Smidge=

Re:Incineration

[fortfive]

You are correct that overall stocks are increasing (or were up to the latest date in the report). But it's not because any particular site is more productive, it's because of decreased harvest and more land being dedicated to growth.

Re:Incineration

[shutdown -p now]

Paper can also be composted quite nicely.

So it is about money

[peragrin]

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.

Re:So it is about money

[cjjjer]

When you live in a capitalistic / consumerism fueled society yes it is about money and everyone is to blame

Rubbish (pun intended)

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Re:Rubbish (pun intended)

[Anonymous Coward]

Toxic inks? All food packaging is made with food-safe inks, usually made from vegetable oils. Newspapers (remember them?) have been using low toxicity inks for years. Most corrugated packaging (cartons) are printed with inks similar to food inks.

Re:Rubbish (pun intended)

[Anonymous Coward]

Lead-based paint has been illegal for residential use (also for public buildings, furniture, and toys) in the US since 1977.

The 1992 law just requires disclosure of known lead-paint hazards before sale of a dwelling: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/healthy_homes/enforcement/disclosure.

Re:Rubbish (pun intended)

[clarkc3]

Lead based paint may be illegal for some uses, but the lines on roadways/highways are pretty much all lead paint

Screw capitalism

[Squapper]

If we don't want to save the world because it's "not profitable", then we are truly fucked. What are we, Ferengi?

Re:Screw capitalism

[Squapper]

You might not realize it but you are hitting the nail on the head. People won't go working for recycling centers for free to make them more profitable. That's exactly why capitalism won't solve environmental problems.

Re:Screw capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

as soon as people like you stop taxing everything and forcing everyone else to participate in your capitalism to survive

Re:Screw capitalism

[Convector]

Ferengi? Don't compare us to those socialists!

Re:Screw capitalism

[DogDude]

If we don't want to save the world because it's "not profitable", then we are truly fucked. What are we, Ferengi?

Star Trek is cute, but we have a real group of people who truly believe that. In the US, they're called "Conservatives".

Re:Screw capitalism

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Capitalism can solve it.

Shove it in a landfill and let robots sort it out in 100 years.

And no, we are not running out of landfill room. It's only a NIMBY problem.

Re:Screw capitalism

[Grishnakh]

Don't be ridiculous. Ferengi are too left-wing to be compared with American conservatives.

Re:Screw capitalism

[tlhIngan]

If we don't want to save the world because it's "not profitable", then we are truly fucked. What are we, Ferengi?

Actually, the real reason it's "not profitable" is because of cost externalization.

If I burn toxic chemicals and release it into the atmosphere, it costs me very little. it costs society a lot (increased health care for those downwind, etc).

And that's why it's "not profitable". We haven't costed out a lot of things - it's still cheaper to pollute than to control pollution.

Rarely is stuff truly "free" - it just means it isn't priced right. Spewing toxic chemicals in the air is effectively free, because the only people who pay are those downwind.

Re:Screw capitalism

[CrimsonAvenger]

Capitalism, unlike how it is portrayed by unions, is not a system by which companies make more money by paying people less. So the capitalism solution is not to have people get paid nothing at a recycling center, but for the recycling center to find out how it will be profitable.

Couldn't agree more.

Qualifiers:

1) it's not capitalist to say "if we can convince the government to force people to use our service, we'll be profitable".

2) if your only "customer" is the government, capitalism is largely meaningless to you (buying favourable legislation isn't a new idea, contrary to popular rumour, and it always happens when it becomes cheaper to buy legislation than to compete in the marketplace.

2) Note that the guy I was responding to was the one saying that capitalism was a bad thing. I'm all for it, because, ultimately, capitalism is all about getting paid for your (hard) work. And I like to get paid.

Re:Screw capitalism

[HornWumpus]

You almost got it.

That's why we have to watch ALL commies and socialists. They are very very dangerous.

Re:Screw capitalism

[dfenstrate]

It's single stream that's bad, not 'capitalism.'
My town has a drop-off only transfer station, no pickup. Residents sort their profitable recyclables* into several large bins. The revenue from these high-quality, high-profit recyclables usually pays for the tipping fees on the trash (which includes non-profitable 'recyclables'). Town tax revenue is still required to pay for the facility upkeep and the people.

Of course, what works in a small bedroom community might not work as well in a dense metro area.

*glass (actually costs money to get rid of, but less than garbage), tin & steel cans, Aluminum cans, #2 colored plastic, #2 undyed plastic, #1 mixed plastic, newspaper, mixed paper, corrugated cardboard.)

Re:Screw capitalism

[bjb]

People won't go working for recycling centers for free to make them more profitable.

Probably around 20 years ago, someone from Ohio mentioned to me that if you had to do "community service" (a.k.a. not quite jail, but not quite getting away with something illegal) then most likely they'd send you to a recycling center to sort the trash.

It would sound to me that we've got a work force that could do the job for free already? Or maybe the problem is that a good portion of the population isn't allowed to be anywhere near sharp glass and/or metal objects that might be coming down a conveyor belt...

Re:Screw capitalism

[vulcanrob]

Well started.

Why can't America recycle its own paper/plastic?

[ITRambo]

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.

Can't...resist...pun...

[jones_supa]

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. ;)

Re:Can't...resist...pun...

[Jason Levine]

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.

Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[Wycliffe]

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.

I agree. It seems like the big problem is "single stream". I had never even heard of "single stream" until this article. I currently live in a place that has "dual stream" and I still find it odd not to have to separate the cans from the plastic. It is more convenient but I would be happy to do the other and if we did happen to have "single stream", I would still probably separate the paper from the cans. Does "single stream" really increase recycling enough to justify the added expense? My experience is that the people that are going to recycle are going to recycle anyways and although "dual stream" is more convenient than having 5 different bins, I don't really see the advantage of "single stream". On another note, the city I know with the highest recycling participation is the one that charges $1 per bag for trash. The problem isn't that recycling is too cheap, it's that landfills are even cheaper.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[serviscope_minor]

I agree. It seems like the big problem is "single stream". I had never even heard of "single stream" until this article.

It's not much of a problem. I live in Southwark which is a single stream system. The Southwark Waste Management Facility is open one weekend per year and is well worth a visit if you like building sized machines.

They went for single stream for various reasons, an important one being that in deepest, darkest London, space for storing stuff until the dustbin lorry visits is limited so people don't do it.

Basically, the mixed recyclables come in and get put into a giant machine to sort the waste with an effectiveness of over 95%. It first goes under a huge hooked wire brush bag splitter. It then goes over very coarse interleavced rollers which removes the large sheets of cardboard. It then goes over finer meshing things which catch and crush glass to sort that out. Then comes the big magnet for steel. Then there's a pulsed magnet rollers which uses magnetic induction to fire off the aluminium into a hopper. That leaves mixed paper and plastic. This then goes past a multispectral laser clasification system which triggers a very powerful air puffer to sort out the paper and plastic.

The sorted waste then goes past a small army of people who manually identify and remove any further errors. This gets it up to over 99.9%.

It's then baled up into huge bales of aluminium, steel, paper and mixed plastic (glass doesn't bale) which is then sent off to various places for further processing.

The facility is running slightly in the red in that the sales don't cover the running costs, but not by a large margin. That's pretty good because with a relatively small outlay of cost to run it, there's a huge amount not being landfilled.

If you live in London or are in there when it's open, go and visit.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[Overzeetop]

Wish I could mod you up. Thanks for the run down. It's kind of a shame there's still a human sorting step (cost) but nice to know about the inside automation (I also wondered about the Al sort). I'd worry that 0.1% contamination is kind of high, but maybe that's just a guess, or maybe remanufacturing really doesn't suffer from that level of contamination.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[coolmoose25]

I live in the Hartford CT area and we have Trash to Energy AND single stream recycling. First - Trash to Energy. The poster above was correct about it not being much of a net energy gain. They burn it in an oil fired plant. Cardboard, food waste, etc. all gets burned. The big thing isn't the energy as much as it is that we don't need a dump anymore except for the ash, which is compact and easy to dispose of. The main garbage dump in Hartford was closed years ago. So overall, a good option to lower the volume of landfilled items and that is the main benefit.

As for single stream, we used to sort it, but now use a large single stream bin. A great improvement all around. Here's why: I toured the recycling center with my daughter's elementary school class. I watched the trucks pull in. This was in the "sort it" days. So a guy would pick up your bin, throw the cardboard with the cardboard, the plastic with the plastic (by type), the glass with the glass, etc. The truck had an opening for each. Anyway, the truck pulls into the recycling center, and the back opens, and the dumper rises, and all of it gets mixed together! I finally asked why, and they didn't have a good answer. So what was the point? It was totally inefficient in that the sorting process the guy did at every house was essentially a useless exercise. And he knew it too, so those sorts were not particularly well done. Bottom line, single stream makes far more sense - sort it at the recycling facility. Don't pay a guy to do it at the curb. Have a truck pick up a big bin automatically.

Finally, the financial end of this... When we went to single stream, we got a garbage can (95gal) and a recycle can (95gal). We found we were producing more garbage than recycling. So I sent my brother in law, who was living with us to go purchase another garbage can. They explained to him that they would like to sell him a recycling can instead. The town made money on the recycling, and garbage cost them. So he came home empty handed. I told him to go down and buy the extra garbage can - I didn't care what it cost the TOWN... I cared about keeping the garbage out of the recycling. So I sent him back and reluctantly they sold him another garbage can.

Roll the clock forward, and the town does what government does best. Since they made money on recycling, they announced that anyone who had more than one garbage can would be issued a new recycle bin and they would be taking the extra garbage can that I had paid for away. And recycling would only pick up every other week. And if I wanted to keep my extra garbage can, I had to pay a $150 a year subscription for it. So, they did what made economic sense for them at my expense.

Of course, my solution to this was simple. I had the same number of cans, it's just one went from Garbage Green to Recycle Blue. So I threw my garbage in the recycle bins. Problem solved for me. And probably part of the reason recycling is more expensive now because of short sighted government workers wishing things were different and turning me into a profit center!

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[serviscope_minor]

Sounds like your local bunch are doing it badly. I think London is too big and dense to worry about such things: it can get very bad very fast is the rubbish clearing doesn't work very smoothly.

I didn't mention but we also have a green waste bin for anything compostable, which is essentially all food and garden waste, including cooked food, bones, even wood infected with honey fungus. The large municipal composters can deal with it properly, kill all the nasties and keep the rats down to a minimum (they actually have a few raptors and owls on the staff to help).

Green waste is collected weekly with recycling and general waste on alternate weeks. That provides a strong incentive so sort properly, especially in summer. If you don't put rottable waste in the green waste bin (actually a brown bin) it gets appalingly smelly. If you don't bother to sort recycling from trash then your bin will get over full.

Also, the dustbin men open the top to check the contents. If you put the wrong stuff in the wrong bin, it won't get emptied and you'll get a tag of shame on the bin telling you why they didn't empty it.

Oh also, you can call the council up to some rather large number of tims per year and they'll come an take away large waste items like beds and old appliances for free. This also prevents people dumping in random locations since it's easier and cheaper to get the waste disposed of properly than it is to dump it.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[dave420]

The quoted 99.9% is before it it sent for further processing. Those specialist processors will undoubtedly get the material to grade, otherwise they simply have no use for it.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[JackieBrown]

I'd guess the 0.1% is still lower than you get than multiple "streams" where each household is responsible for the sorting,

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[Penguinisto]

Dude - where I live (Western Oregon) we do triple-streaming - trash, recyclables, and yard waste (compostable organic matter).

Bastards are picky about it too. For example, if you so much as accidentally leave one plastic grocery bag in the recyclables bin, they'll refuse the whole frickin' can that week, so you get to wait two weeks for the next pickup. Little wonder most folks say 'fsck it' and jam the trash can full of anything that's not an uber-obvious recyclable.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[catsRus]

I agree i get paid to recycle aluminum, steel, cardboard and electronics in the free market and my village takes the glass and plastic and paper. Why do the big cities and their corporate overlords have trouble making it pay when the average person and a village of 30,000 people can seem to manage.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[radarskiy]

"So, they did what made economic sense for them"

So this is bad when a goverment does something that makes economic sense?

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[radarskiy]

Because consumers are not experts on sorting recyclables, and any mistake means the batch of recyclables becomes trash... unless you resort at the recycling facility. If they have to resort anyway, might as well just do all of the sorting that way

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[LWATCDR]

That is the same system as we have but I would call that single stream.
Multi stream is when you separate metal from plastic/paper at least to me.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[catsRus]

I used to live in San Jose and they made us sort into 3 bins and then dumped them into the single bin on the truck. Just scratch your head and say "whatever".

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[coolmoose25]

When the government is representing me, and is supposed to serve me, and then does what is financially good for them to my detriment, yes, it is bad... and wrong.

Re:Why not go back to consumer sorting.

[shutdown -p now]

So basically it's a solved engineering problem, and it's not used universally only because of the extra costs?

Sounds like a shake down more than anything

[hsmith]

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.

Meh

[Alomex]

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.

Re:Meh

[Passman]

Everybody uses the word crisis when their concerns are being addressed. Budget Crisis. Immigration Crisis. Housing Crisis.

You make it sound like we have a "Crisis" Crisis.

Re:Meh

[Capt James McCarthy]

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.

Fear is a great motivator. If movements do not bring the fear into your home to have it appear right next door, no one would ever accept giving up control and decisions to others. Yeah, you can call me a tinfoil hat wearer, but deny that it's not there and true. People need to remember that it's never as bad as it seems and never as good as it appears.

Re:Meh

[Jesus_666]

nationwide crisis

Another crossover? God dammit, DC!

Economic Externality

[monkeyxpress]

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.

Re:Economic Externality

[scamper_22]

I agree with your general point.

Yes, the financial growth system is a mess.
The problem is that both the left and right are just as dependent on GDP growth. Heck, probably the only opposition you have to the financial growth system comes from the extremes on the left (occupy wall street) and the tea party (right). Everyone other movement basically believes in growth and the financial section.

Do you ever wonder why every big city (New York, Toronto, London) is 'progressive', while at the same time pretty much generating most of its wealth from financial games?

It's a big irony.

There's also a huge number of political ironies. One of the reasons you can eat so cheaply in much of the developing world is because you can pay people crap. I guarantee you, you make the minimum wage $2.00/hour in London and you'll magically start seeing lots of places serving fresh food.
But that brings all sorts of issues depending on your end of the political spectrum.

Probably the biggest issue right now is housing. Our politicians/bankers have convinced the population that increases in home prices increase their wealth. That this is somehow a good thing.

When in reality, you're still living in the same home you were 20 years ago when home prices were more reasonable. You get the same value out of the home. The only difference is all your citizens are trying to jump on the real estate train out bidding each other due to low interest rates.

In any case, I'll sneak this is there. I hate plastic and packaging. I can claim it from a moral angle. But it's also out of self interest. Every week, I take out the trash and my god is there a lot of packaging that takes up space. It's just me and my wife and there's so many bottles, cans, boxes... it's insane.
I actually started buying products with nicer packaging, just knowing I have to take this crap out.

At my supermarket for example, they sell croissants. But they package it in a big plastic container. Just think of the wasted space in my recycling bag. I stopped buying it and only grab it when they sometimes package it in a bag. Or even sometimes we buy the fresh cut fruit. That shit comes in a plastic container. Man, at least make it out of something better. It is literally used to hold the fruit for less than a week, but they package it in plastic that can last 100 years or whatever.

I don't know what it will take, but I want to see less packaging, at least in these obvious cases. I know some products needs to be shipped or need more packaging for security/anti theft... but there is so much low hanging fruit...

Re:Just consume and throw away

[Drethon]

What is the point when they charge extra for a recycle bin which I would possibly recycle one grocery bag a week with? Thought it might be different in Michigan compared to the rest of the country since we have 10 cent deposit on bottles so those don't go in the regular recycling.

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Netcraft Confirms It

[Nova Express]

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.

/Obligatory

Glass

[master_kaos]

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

Re:Glass

[Overzeetop]

There's actually some valuable logic there. It's hard to get people into a habit of sorting, but it's relatively easy to divert a (pre-sorted) waste stream to the most efficient disposal method.

Look to, of all places, Phoenix

[Applehu Akbar]

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.

Re:Look to, of all places, Phoenix

[Megane]

My wheelie bins are BOTH blue. The only difference is that the recycling one has a gray lid with the word "RECYCLING" stamped on top. I keep worrying that if I only put out the recycling bin, the regular garbage truck will empty it, thus wasting my effort to keep track of the recyclables. So I make sure to put out the trash bin too even when it's nearly empty.

Days of "Built to Last" are coming back

[blue_teeth]

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.

Chinese Recycling

[Passman]

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.

Re:Chinese Recycling

[sysrammer]

A closed cycle. Very efficient.

Sell it to North Korea

[AqD]

They will buy it definitely! No garbage no food!

Re:Why can't America recycle its own paper/plastic

[Anonymous Coward]

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 : good living wage union job

[leftie]

Sorting trash looks like a place Social Dem model government could provide good union living wage jobs.

Good governance would make sure recycling is done

[leftie]

Garbage man has been a good union living wage job for a century. Make recycling sorting another good union living wage job.

Some simple proposals

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Some simple proposals

[hvdh]

In the EU, 70% of all glas produced/sold ends up in recycling containers. In Germany and Austria it even is 90-95%. Although a huge amount of waste glass is avialable, recycling companies still PAY you for bringing large quantities of glass "waste" (10-20€/t for well-sorted clear glass). If it would be cheaper to make fresh glass instead of recycled glass, they wouldn't pay for it.

Re:Some simple proposals

[drinkypoo]

If it would be cheaper to make fresh glass instead of recycled glass, they wouldn't pay for it.

If someone is giving you government subsidies, or if it's legally mandated that it has to be recycled and someone gets in trouble otherwise and therefore they are paying you to see that it is recycled, then it can become profitable. But it's not any cheaper to start with used glass than with sand, which is actually easier to handle and which doesn't have to be collected from all over. Well, it does, but physics does that for you.

Re:Some simple proposals

[drinkypoo]

Do they melt down all glass bottles? The reason 8oz bottles of Coca-Cola and Pepsi were so thick (and still are in developing nations), is because they're meant to be washed and reused many times.

Yeah, we stopped doing that in the 80s, while I was a kid. It did persist up until then, though. Now a small handful of companies are still doing it with milk bottles. In my area, Strauss Creamery is putting some really excellent dairy products into glass. The bottle deposit is only a buck, and you can bet they're making a profit at that price.

Anyhow, even for single-use, I'd still prefer glass to plastic. Disregarding issues with plastic leaching some unhealthy chemicals into our food and drink,

I don't disregard the issue that all plastics leach toxics into their contents. That's pretty serious to me, especially given their similarity to hormones.

And we _could_ always switch back to manufacturing thicker glass bottles and reusing them. I would imagine that given current technology, we could easily create an automated way to inspect glass bottles for defects before reuse.

I bet we could do it pretty reasonably with a laser these days, sharks optional.

Re:e-waste

[tpwade]

Are you trying to demonstrate how much of a "consumer" you are? Your Android 2.2 likely does everything it did back when you thought it was all cool and new. Now you're lusting over new stuff just because it is new stuff (HW, SW, same thing). Buy quality, fix it when it breaks, keep it forever, and above all else, learn to enjoy what you have. Stop lusting over stuff. THAT is how you stop participating.

Re:e-waste

[rhazz]

Why do you need a newer Android? Perhaps you are part of the problem.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Tax packaging

[v(*_*)vvvv]

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.

Re:e-waste

[nitehawk214]

"fix it when it breaks"

Do you even have a smartphone? These things are designed to be unrepairable, or so expensive to repair you might as well replace them.

Re:e-waste

[Grishnakh]

Your Android 2.2 likely does everything it did back when you thought it was all cool and new.

No, it doesn't. I have an older HTC phone and the thing is ridiculously slow. It wasn't like this when I bought it. I've complained a lot about it, and the standard response is to do a "factory reset". I've tried that and it makes zero difference; you can't actually wipe and reload the software on these phones the way you can with a PC.

Not only that, but older Android versions are filled with security holes (perhaps that's why it's so slow? Infected with malware?). These holes can't be fixed because no one feels like it: Google just tells you to upgrade to a newer version of Android, which of course means buying a new device because the phone maker refuses to support their devices with newer software.

If you were talking about a PC, you'd be correct for the most part, except that WinXP no longer gets security updates either, so it's unsafe to use on a network. But you can always load a brand-new version of Linux on an old PC and have a working computer, though it won't be quite as fast or power-efficient as the latest machines. And Win7 is supported for now and probably many years to come, and works on any hardware that's not too ancient, and if it gets infected with malware you can always wipe it and re-install it (or re-image it, which is much faster). You can't do any of this stuff easily with a phone; if you're lucky, you might be able to jump through a bunch of hoops to "unlock" it and "root" it so that you can do these things.

Re:e-waste

[znrt]

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 Q is: Where is the Break-Even Point ?

[kjhambrick]

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

Subsidized by the Government

[juancnuno]

Then recycling needs to be subsidized by the government. I would hate to see landfills fill up with recyclables.

Re:Subsidized by the Government

[mi]

Then recycling needs to be subsidized by the government.

Government first needs to confiscate the monies from the taxpayers to be able to do this.

I would hate to see landfills fill up with recyclables.

"See", huh? When was the last time you, actually, laid your eyes on a landfill? But if recyclables being there are such an eye-sore for you, then you pay for it.

Re:Subsidized by the Government

[dumky2]

Changing who pays does not change the equation.
If it takes more resources or more valuable resources to turn garbage into something useful again, then it may not be worth doing. Prices and profits/losses tell you something important.

In this case, I would look at existing subsidies that make the problem worse: for instance, free/subsidized garbage collection (if people don't pay for someone to accept and handle their trash, they will generate more trash), or subsidized landfills (if landfills pollute their neighbors and it is not controlled, then there is an externalities argument).

Re:Good governance would make sure recycling is do

[Penguinisto]

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...)

Cost analysis

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Cost analysis

[sampson7]

President Obama, you really need to stop trolling people like that!

-- Michelle

Re:Cost analysis

[cwsumner]

Granted, the cost accounting is not what most people would call "easy".

But keep in mind that a lot of people on SlashDot do calculus "on their feet" and routinely "mine" company databases for actual real-time cost data.
So it is all relative... 8-)

I was always septical about recycling efficiency

[Eloking]

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/...

Re:"metric ton"

[Anonymous Coward]

1 metric ton = 1000 kg. Also known as a tonne.

If you've take your head out of your ass for a second, you'd realize that there are regional names for some common measurement units. Very few regions refer to it as a megagram, even though that is the official designation.

At least we're not mucking with long ton versus short ton anymore. (well, not as much)

"Progressivism" is the problem

[mi]

Trying to encourage conservation, progressive lawmakers and environmentalists have made matters worse

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].

Re:"Progressivism" is the problem

[david_thornley]

I've lived in a city where garbage was a private concern, not run by the city. It sucked.

Right now, we have two days a week when a garbage truck comes down the street, and that's because our street is the boundary between Monday and Tuesday pickup. When we lived in St. Paul, garbage trucks were always coming down the street, and since it wasn't a wide street it could block traffic.

In Minneapolis, everybody gets their garbage collected, and so there's no way to try to duck out on the process to save money. In St. Paul, people who don't want to pay for garbage collection still produce garbage, so it goes into other people's cans or gets dumped illegally somewhere.

Re:"Progressivism" is the problem

[mi]

In St. Paul, people who don't want to pay for garbage collection still produce garbage, so it goes into other people's cans or gets dumped illegally somewhere.

So, in order to prevent a few miscreants from illegally dumping their garbage somewhere, you force the entire city to use a government-run monopoly... Makes sense, sure.

Like I said, "progressivism" — like your own — is the problem. Funerals of your kind don't happen often enough.

Re:"Progressivism" is the problem

[david_thornley]

I described my experiences. You apparently want me to live in a suckier city because it offends your ideology.

Recycling is more complicated than people think

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Recycling is more complicated than people think

[Megane]

That cracked.com link also points out a general problem with the general level of human stupidity. (a person is smart, people are dumb)

So first of all, for the love of all that is good and holy (also, my work gloves), do not put things that are drenched in your bodily fluids in the recycling bin. Piss-soaked bed liners and used diapers and, holy shit, bloody tampons just end up going to the landfill via a more roundabout route. I suppose I can understand the mindset -- not knowing any better, people assume everything under the Sun can be crapped in, cleansed with fire, and then reused. I hate to say it, but that's just not how it works.

(etc.) People also put the stupidest crap into the Goodwill donation bins. I know because they have a "salvage outlet" store here where they take the stuff the either doesn't sell or they don't want to take the time to put it on a regular store shelf, and put into enormous bins for people to go all shark feeding frenzy over. Though at least they don't go as far as stuff with bodily fluids and excrement all over it.

TANSTAFFL

[sjbe]

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.

Re:e-waste

[rhazz]

Sure, but even if industry supported devices 3 times as long as today, most likely they would still become unsupported prior to the product being physically unusable. If a company produces an internet-capable piece of hardware, are they on the hook to support it against all future attack vectors until the hardware rots?

buy the new phone, or stop using phones altogether.

Option b seems perfectly reasonable from a waste management perspective, especially when we are talking about personal phones (we want them, we certainly don't need them) - and to be fair I did miss the AC saying they wouldn't participate any longer, and I assume that means not buying newer phones. I certainly would be unwilling commit to that, which means I too am part of the problem.

global problem, local stupidity

[Virtucon]

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.

Metal and paper, good. Petroplastics - landfill.

[oneiron]

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.

Re:Metal and paper, good. Petroplastics - landfill

[oneiron]

Clearly, I meant to say it's arguable that some types of recycling produce more carbon pollution than it sinks. Whoops.

Re:e-waste

[znrt]

are they on the hook to support it against all future attack vectors until the hardware rots?

they should, within reasonable limits. 2 years seems way too short, imo. it's also not that much to ask to backport bugfixes and roll updates, these are no small business with no small profit. they should be responsible.

I certainly would be unwilling commit to that, which means I too am part of the problem.

there's probably another way inbetween, we should definitely make companies responsible for the stuff they throw out, with regulations, customer associations and above all educating people on responsible shopping (and manufacturing, disposal, ...). once there is a majority demanding that with enough political backing industry will be eager to comply.

What a load of crap

[cgoodric]

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.

Paper and plastic should be burned

[Comrade Ogilvy]

If recycling is not economical, we can release those BTUs in a modern clean furnace, and then the disposal costs are miniscule.

Stop sorting, use Thermal Depolymerization

[Migraineman]

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.

Re:What I wrote's nonsense dave420?

[Anonymous Coward]

awwww did someone get butthurt the big bad logical meanie?

Isn't the problem the handwork?

[bistromath007]

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.

Re:The Q is: Where is the Break-Even Point ?

[Whorhay]

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.

Re:e-waste

[ceoyoyo]

I guess if you haven't figured out how to use a screwdriver. The "non-replaceable" batteries in iPhones and Android devices are pretty easy to replace, and you can get them cheap on Amazon or eBay. I'm about to replace the screen on my iPhone. It's actually cheaper to do it yourself than the $50 extended warranty charge from Apple, and MUCH cheaper than the $200 if it's off warranty.

I had a friend who used to repair game consoles. People would bring him dead xboxes and he'd desolder the BGA chips and replace them. THAT's a bit extreme. Replacing broken parts in a smartphone isn't.

Go Containerless

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Zero-Sort is the problem....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Recycling is just a Pagan sacrement.

[ceoyoyo]

Paper in landfills probably isn't such a good idea because that land tends to be close to cities and thus at a premium. Bury it in old mines or sink it in the ocean instead.

Re:"metric ton"

[mister_playboy]

Very few regions refer to it as a megagram, even though that is the official designation.

And why is that, exactly? Why adopt a term with a different meaning from another system of measurement into a system that is supposed to be all about simplicity and ease of unit conversions?

"Metric ton" is an oxymoron of the first rate.

recycling is NOT dying.

[WindBourne]

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.

Burn it

[Karmashock]

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.

Still two R's left

[Trogre]

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.

What's with the gratuitous insult

[sjbe]

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.

Recycling

[pebear]

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.....

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