American recycling is stalling, and the big blue bin is one reason why

Washington Post via MSN ^ | 6/20/15 | Aaron C. Davis

[Libloather]

**SNIP**

Once a profitable business for cities and private employers alike, recycling in recent years has become a money-sucking enterprise. The District, Baltimore and many counties in between are contributing millions annually to prop up one of the nation’s busiest facilities here in Elkridge, Md. — but it is still losing money. In fact, almost every facility like it in the country is running in the red. And Waste Management and other recyclers say that more than 2,000 municipalities nationwide are paying to dispose of their recyclables instead of the other way around.

In short, the business of American recycling has stalled. And industry leaders warn that the situation is worse than it appears.

“If people feel that recycling is important — and I think they do, increasingly — then we are talking about a nationwide crisis,” said David Steiner, chief executive of Waste Management, the nation’s largest recycler that owns the Elkridge plant and 50 others.

The Houston-based company’s recycling division posted a loss of nearly $16 million in the first quarter of the year. In recent months, it has shut nearly one in 10 of its biggest recycling facilities. An even larger percentage of its plants may go dark in the next 12 months, Steiner said.

[American in Israel]

Recycling is all about the government getting a nickle a bottle “deposit”. The rest of the industry is incidental.

In the old days it was simply called a tax.

[BluH2o]

One reason recycling became popular was to help alleviate the growing concern of municipalities with land fill issues.
Trash has to go somewhere and when additional land is needed the ‘not in my back yard’ mind set comes into play. I'm a big fan of recycling and take plastics, glass, newspapers, cardboard, etc., to our local recycle facility. It's located at our city maintenance facility which we drive by frequently, so it's not like we're driving miles out of our way.

[BfloGuy]

Those losses, the economic reason for not recycling, clearly show there is no valid reason for recycling everything on a grand scale

Exactly right. Prices mean something.

And the low prices for some recycled materials are an indication that more energy, resources, and manpower are needed to recycle them than to discard them and buy new. It's not dissimilar to ethanol which requires more energy to make than it ultimately provides.

But that concept is one that few leftists will bother to try and understand.

[hal ogen]

Most municipal recycling (except for some metals) costs more than it is worth. However, taxpayers are billed so it becomes “profitable”. What a feel-good scam.

[GailA]

So were cloth diapers. It takes 1 of those disposable ones 500 yrs to decompose.

We live rural and there is only cardboard and plastic bags that you take to the recycle bin. Rest you’d have to take to a regular dump. So you just toss it in the trash. We do the first 2. I reuse the plastic bags for food waste and bathroom trash. Then the excess gets taken up to Kroger’s and put in their bag recycle box.

[Graybeard58]

In my little community, you choose your garbage collector company. For years I had Waste Management. They started sending me mailers, bragging about how "green" they were becoming. Charges started increasing, when they hit $80 per quarter for once a week pick up, I started shopping around and found X-Waste Inc. Probably not a national but they pick up once a week for $50 per quarter and do a better job than Waste management.

Their only restrictions are "no auto tires or heavy furniture, appliances" but the guys who do the pick ups told me to go ahead and put the tires by the curb, they'd take them too. Their only real restriction is on stuff that is too heavy for two men to pick up and toss into the truck, such as refrigerators and such.

When a company or product brags about greenness, you can bet it's comparatively expensive.

[outofsalt]

Does the Mob still run this racket?

[who knows what evil?]

In order to get the behavior they want, our rulers in government make certain behaviors mandatory.

Welcome to Red Hampshire...IIRC, the recycling facility/dump in Lebanon had somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen different receptacles/bins to sort your trash into...

[wally_bert]

I worked in electronics recycling and whatnot. Granted I was supposed to be more of a technical person and refurb/Ebay person but that sort of finally happened. The guy in charge of it told me he set me up to fail. There were witnesses too. He succeeded.

Just about everyone with a couple of exceptions in management were deranged. I couldn’t make them up.

I’ll never forget that he told me to press down capacitors and marked them fixed.

I quit twice actually. The second time I took a leap of faith and took on contract work which in most respects I liked a lot better which led to a good job finally.

Taking a look at CL jobs and gigs for the first time in years, I saw it open again after so many years. Guess its still a revolving door.

I would rather pick up cans on the side of the road and live in a cardboard box before having anything to do with that bunch.

[The Great RJ]

I remember when we had to separate our recyclables for collection. It was a pain in the posterior, but it probably made recycling more efficient. I am happy to just dump my recyclables unsorted in the blue bin, but realize that I am paying more in taxes for the privilege and most of what I am recycling may well end up in landfills anyway.

[mad_as_he$$]

In the West every model of recycling has been tried and failed. Used to be you could get $30/ton for cardboard now you can't give it away. The cost to haul it exceeds the value. That is the rub. Also out here landfilling is cheaper than about any other option. Glass is sorted at the recycle centers and hauled to the landfill. No market for it that is feasible to cover the haul costs.

[Hiryusan]

Here is a question for the more resource minded on the board:

We all know all these recyclables must be delivered in clean condition. How much total water is used to clean recyclables prior to drop off?

statewide?
In California?
Since the program began a quarter century ago?

Could this be causing some of the other publicized problems we hear about these days??

[Morpheus2009]

Recycling on it’s own isn’t such a bad thing, as a business though, I have heard that it only benefits a few. It just boggles my mind why less recycling comes around where there is so much environmental hype.

[The Antiyuppie]

No matter how bad the kooks want it, The ONLY things worth home recycling are aluminum (definitely, and the issue is refining energy, not scarcity) and electronics (maybe, and if we made a better effort at it, definitely). Period. Everything else is just for show. There is no shortage of sand for glass and trees for paper. These things are wildly energy-negative to recycle.

[G Larry]

Recycling at the household level has ALWAYS been a cost/benefit loser.

[q_an_a]

good points and it shows that there is plenty of profit not just “waste”. Many small “second hand steel” products like garden items, knives etc could be made in America but 90% + of the second hand steel is in China...making those items instead of American jobs.

[wintertime]

I have not followed this topic so maybe someone can enlighten me.

Question:

If all trash were dumped in a landfill wouldn't those recyclable materials remain there? Then if the market ever demanded recycled materials wouldn't entrepreneurs know exactly where to find and figure out how to dig them back up again?

[sheana]

I refuse to make the county’s money for them. They delivered a big blue recycling bin to our house and we called them and told them to come pick it up.

[Carry_Okie]

It's not dissimilar to ethanol which requires more energy to make than it ultimately provides. But that concept is one that few leftists will bother to try and understand.

Their sponsors in the oil and gas business understand it perfectly. I have never seen a large "environmental" program that did not mandate the consumption of more energy.

[bert]

you are right. the problem with the land fill that I see is that all (most) of the recyclable material is in black plastic bags