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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
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Wednesday June 24 2015, @02:37AM
There is not that much energy waste involved to completely remanufacture the bottle, given a clean feed. Nor is it that much of a problem to literally steam-clean all the incoming glass. The problem is it has to be the correct glass. Glass has different constituents just like anything else, and the manufacturing process is tuned to a certain mix of glass.
What this means is manufacturers must get together and agree on ONE formulation for all "consumable" glasses.
Same with plastics. Either its the clear stuff which will be made into other clear stuff, or its the opaque stuff which can only be used for things where color is not all that important ( Think plastic foundation timber for outdoor construction, possibly layered with a color coat for uniform external appearance. ). I have already seen some rather impressive plastic timber at Home Depot. Recycled plastic. Foamed, Molded into timber shapes. Sawable, drillable, nailable, screwable. Use it for stuff like deck foundations and patio covers which have always been a pain in the arse to keep termites at bay.
Recycling WILL work. However to make it practical, stuff must be designed with its end-of-life recycling in mind from the start. It snapped together; it must also decompose back into its components when its purpose is done, whether by disassembly or simple crush then sort the pieces.
Very little stuff I see today was designed with recycling in mind. Especially plastics. We have got to get our act together and settle on a "one size fits all" kind of stuff for consumables. Leave the specialty plastics for special industrial usage. There may be no way to economically recycle unique plastics with thermal decomposition or filler being the only viable method left to dispose of it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]