I was involved a few years back with the revamping of my towns transfer station in NH. Yes, we made money on Aluminum. At one point we made a lot of money on Aluminum. Not so much anymore.
All the other recycled items lower your cost per ton to haul away. Cardboard is by far the biggest volume item. There is a market for cardboard and brown paper bags. It is relatively easy to turn it back into cardboard and brown paper bags.
Tin cans(dog & cat food, etc.) all go right in with any scrap metal. You will get paid for it, but you need to truck it to the scrap yard. Your trucking costs will probably make you break even.
Construction waste like drywall, asphalt shingles, etc. all need to be separated out because they go to a different land fill than the general trash. This is the most expensive trash to dispose of. We charged residents to get rid of any of these items.
My former town of Wilton, NH had an incinerator. It was grandfathered in. They burned all the non recycled trash.
Recycling is not really a liberal/conservative issue IMHO. It is a fiscally responsible means of lowering my municipality’s cost of disposing of trash. There is not as much landfill space as you would think. Here in NH, almost all towns HAD a landfill. Ours has been capped for 25 years. By removing fiscally viable items from the trash stream it extends the landfill life. Recycling in my town SAVED us money. Therefore, controlling my property taxes.
“There is not as much landfill space as you would think.” But there is an almost infinite amount of space for landfills. So the left creates a landfill crisis that is used to help justify recycling. Landfill space need not be expensive. Energy could less expensive as well which would also degrade the value of recyclables.
All of the loony leftist policies that drive up manufacturing cost, landfill cost, environmental regulatory compliance costs, and government enforced slave labor for sorting, make this a true lib/prog vs conservative isssue.
There is far more landfill space than you can possibly imagine.
“There is not as much landfill space as you would think.”
Has youse ever been West of the Mighty Miss?
snort...giggle...ROTFLMAO!