Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Tuesday June 23 2015, @09:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the wasting-away dept.

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 recycling 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, imperilling 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 any more. 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."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:21PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:21PM (#199923) Homepage Journal

    I believe that typically glass/aluminum is not an issue for recycling. Metals in particular are relatively easy to recycle, especially when pre-sorted (achieved with a deposit).

    I've lived in both the US states of Michigan and Arizona, with Michigan having the highest deposit (0.10USD per carbonated container) and Arizona has none. The proof that metals are a good recycling option is that in Arizona there are independent metal recyclers who will pay for your aluminum cans.

    The large issue is plastics and papers. Even with presorting, these are quite energy intensive products to recycle, and they result in an inferior product. Not to mention that the price of natural gas (feedstock for many plastics) is particularly low.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1) by PocketSizeSUn on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:50PM

    by PocketSizeSUn (5340) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:50PM (#199939)

    Correct.

    Aside from metals and clean poly water bottles the entire rest of the 'recycle' chain is a net negative in terms of both energy *and* environmental impact.
    It costs more in terms of energy and chemicals to recycle paper than to use new wood pulp. The additional positive is that *all* of that wood pulp was purpose grown (planted and harvested) for use as wood pulp / lumber.
    People just get confused because the plant / harvest cycle on trees in a multi-year not the sub 200 days of most agricultural products.

    It's a simple question really ... if you have to pay someone to get rid of it ... it's a net negative.