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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: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday March 11 2019, @12:43PM (2 children)
Oh, but I have.
I'm not saying alternatives to plastic should be mandatory, just that the plastic versions should have a cost associated with them that reflects their potential for causing environmental damage. Increasing demand for alternatives through education and a cultural shift is good too, but demand will always be a function of price so that must be addressed also.
We don't sell products with radium in anymore to the general public and we're better off because of it. Construction materials change as knowledge of their effects improves. That doesn't impinge on your freedom as an individual very much at all, because better alternatives will come along and quality of life as a whole will improve. If you're determined you want to fill your home with only the manliest of manly toxic chemicals, I'm sure you can pick up a load of outmoded items second hand. And in the case of plastics, no-one's banning them anytime soon, we're just talking about them becoming a bit more expensive and / or the alternatives becoming a bit cheaper. It's a bit of a stretch to say that's treating someone like you own them.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:08AM (1 child)
Even recycling causes considerable environmental damage, particularly through the waste of human time and effort. The sauce works for the gander as well as the goose. I think if recycling had additional cost to reflect the damage it does to the environment, it would not fare well for most materials as compared to just throwing stuff away in a landfill.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:51PM
That's why massive reforestation combined with the use of timber would be best.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?