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from the Betteridge-Says:-Reduce,-Reuse,-and-THEN-Recycle dept.
For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China—tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But last year, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper—magazines, office paper, junk mail—and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away.
Most are choosing the latter. "We are doing our best to be environmentally responsible, but we can't afford it," said Judie Milner, the city manager of Franklin, New Hampshire. Since 2010, Franklin has offered curbside recycling and encouraged residents to put paper, metal, and plastic in their green bins. When the program launched, Franklin could break even on recycling by selling it for $6 a ton. Now, Milner told me, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate. One-fifth of Franklin's residents live below the poverty line, and the city government didn't want to ask them to pay more to recycle, so all those carefully sorted bottles and cans are being burned. Milner hates knowing that Franklin is releasing toxins into the environment, but there's not much she can do. "Plastic is just not one of the things we have a market for," she said.
The same thing is happening across the country. Broadway, Virginia, had a recycling program for 22 years, but recently suspended it after Waste Management told the town that prices would increase by 63 percent, and then stopped offering recycling pickup as a service. "It almost feels illegal, to throw plastic bottles away," the town manager, Kyle O'Brien, told me.
Without a market for mixed paper, bales of the stuff started to pile up in Blaine County, Idaho; the county eventually stopped collecting it and took the 35 bales it had hoped to recycle to a landfill. The town of Fort Edward, New York, suspended its recycling program in July and admitted it had actually been taking recycling to an incinerator for months. Determined to hold out until the market turns around, the nonprofit Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful has collected 400,000 tons of plastic. But for now, it is piling the bales behind the facility where it collects plastic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @11:03PM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caw-969W-D4 [youtube.com]
They took an 'interesting' approach to 'recycling'.
They are calling burning recycling. It is destruction.
They have a 70%+ burn rate of items that could be recycled. They are not even playing around with reduce/reuse. But at least they have no landfills! Which is slightly better I guess. Oh and they do not run them in the summer. Because 98% of the value is coming from the heat and their particular climate they are in.
This problem starts at the beginning of the stream and the end of the stream is trying like hell to keep up with billions of tons of this plastic goop. Instead we have huge bails of the stuff sitting around. Hoping someone will recycle it.
Plastic has a low recycle rate. There just are too many different types and the chemical process to fix it is a real nasty one. There is no real market for it. Paper only comes in second on that. Glass and metal recycle very easily, but we use very little of that these days.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday March 11 2019, @06:30AM
Thank you. Look what's happening in Linköping. Beautiful example of what NOT to do. Sweden is Socialist, right? One of the big Socialist countries. They're saying, "oh, we're closing our Coal Plants, we're very Environmental!" And supposedly, they're closing them because of the Carbon. It's not the Carbon. Because they turn around and they burn wood, they burn garbage, they burn many things. People don't know this, those things have Carbon too. A LOT!!! And when Sweden burns all that stuff, they're sending that Carbon into the air. Just like when they burn Coal. Except, it's worse. They're burning very dirty things, things that, there's not a lot of power in them. Not a lot of energy. And it ends up being much more Carbon than if they just used Coal and put the trash & wood in the ground. Instead of spoiling our wonderful Environment. Dumb, and Phoney!!!
You have an old building, or some old furniture. It's not in style anymore, so you get rid of it, right? And you have all this old wood to dump. That's O.K., there's a big market for Recycled Wood. Which they call reclaimed. But so much of it is just rotten. Sweden, they burn it. And they call it Recycle, that's a lie. As you said. But if they would just put it in the ground and wait -- Coal. Great for the electric, great for Steel Mills. And we make many things from it -- the soap, the shampoo, the ointment and so much more. Incredible shampoo, by the way. You put that one on, no more dandruff. And no more lice. Because of Coal. Our amazing Coal Industry is an industry that's finally coming into its own -- because of me.
And our economy is booming incredibly. Used to be, if you wanted to be a Coal Miner you had to go to college. They wanted that degree. No more. They still ask about the degree. But if you don't have it, that's O.K. They need the people. And it's that way in many companies, many industries. Digital. Tim Apple says they love to hire folks that didn't go to, or didn't finish college. Because their Company was founded by a guy (Steve) that dropped out of college. But they're having trouble finding enough good people from the non-college folks. Because the smart ones are flocking to our Coal Mines. They want to mine Beautiful Clean Coal. Something nobody thought would ever happen, it's happening BIG TIME. Because of me. MAGA!