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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: 4, Informative) by darkfeline on Monday March 11 2019, @12:37AM (8 children)
No, it's better to recycle as in reuse. I agree that melting down is a bad idea for most materials including plastics. Some metals or glasses make sense to melt down (but I do wish we can go back to actually reusing glass bottles, it's an egregious waste to cast glass bottles only for a single use).
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 11 2019, @03:06AM
re CYCLE means to take output material, break it down, and use that to make new goods. it is a distinct idea from reuse.
(Score: 2, Informative) by MindEscapes on Monday March 11 2019, @03:00PM
Just remember that using re-usable glass contains for products like soda and milk have a heavy weight component. So you help lower plastic waste, but vastly increase CO2 generation related to hauling that weight everywhere.
Which one is the lower environmental impact?
I haven't seen the numbers posted but wanted to point out that focusing too closely on a single problem just exacerbates others. One of the main reasons everyone switched to plastic was the reduced shipping costs.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday March 11 2019, @03:20PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Monday March 11 2019, @03:44PM (1 child)
Where does the deposit money come from? Does the beer maker save money by paying to get the bottle back and reuse it? Or are they forced to do it by legislation and lose money on the deal?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday March 11 2019, @04:44PM
There's an EU-wide packaging tax, which is quite a gnarly stick you don't want to be beaten with. You can buy out of that tax by being part of an approved deposit+reuse/recycling scheme. That costs - in Finland it's a fully publically-accountable non-profit company - but that's way smaller than the tax (e.g. unit fees are about 1/50th what the tax would be for cans). Almost all producers use identical bottles, so you don't need to separate the majority of them, so overheads on processing returns in this centralised scheme are kept low (the producers are part owners of this centralised company - it's in their own interest to make it as efficient as possible). Prices on shelves are always quoted without the deposit, all consumers know there's an additional payment, which will be separately listed on your receipt. Shops pass the full value of the deposit to the producers. Producers pay the full value of the deposit to the returns agency. Who in turn pays the full value to the shops. Who finally pay the full amount to the customer upon return. Such velocity - wow! There's no hidden skimming going on. Return places are absolutely everywhere - all supermarkets and convenience stores, plus stand-alone units - so you can literally drop off your can within minutes of finishing it, and get your deposit back. E&OE.
It's still a stick, but it's a smaller stick than the EU one, so everyone buys into it.
Note, my data was either out of date or mis-remembered (possibly both, I haven't lived there for many years) - cans have the highest return rates - about what I quoted, not bottles, which seem to now be around 90%, PET doing better than glass.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Monday March 11 2019, @03:36PM (2 children)
"...it's an egregious waste to cast glass bottles only for a single use"
Please provide the science and economics behind this statement. Because if it were true, bottle recycling and reuse would be thriving without government intervention.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday March 11 2019, @04:48PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:50AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves