Posted on 03/05/2019 2:18:45 PM PST by grundle
Americans are consuming more and more stuff. Now that other countries won’t take our papers and plastics, they’re ending up in the trash.
After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover you haven’t recycled appropriately.
But now, much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.
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 like 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 plastics in their green bins. When the program launched, Franklin could break even on recycling by selling for $6 a ton. Now, Milner told me, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 per 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
My wife is a true believer in recycling and will do it no matter the facts and economic realities.
The Atlantic...even when they get it right, they get it wrong.
Does she insist on washing the garbage?
My PC college town has been recycling recyclables straight into the landfill for years.
People who do it still think they’re holy, though.
Most suburban communities around here are scaling back on recycling. They stopped accepting glass on Jan. 1.
Not the City of Pittsburgh though under Mayor Bippy McBikepath. Gonna continue to collect every last scrap even if we lose money on the deal. For climate change n’at.
Aww, no more recycling shrines?
Only clean trash for a clean recycle bin.
The idiots here want to ban all plastic bags ,LOL
I have a blue (”recycle”) bag can and a white bad bin.
I decide which one to use randomly. I know they end up in the same place anyway but it is a rule.
They only pick up the blue bags one day a week. If my blue bag is full on the other day I put it in a white bag and put it out anyway.
Recycling is fun!
I think everything ends up in the same place anyhow.
I don’t mind recycling, but I would like to think there is a purpose behind it.
We toss a lot of stuff. It’s a shame to see it all go to waste.
It was always a farce. Selling it and acting like they solved the problem. No one had the incentive to actually really figure out a doable recycle because using a farce brought in scrupulous monies, why be real. I mean people should know how to deal with their own excrement safely and sustainable for life.
Sounds like some of my neighbors who sort out all the different stuff, clear glass, green glass, tin cans, aluminum etc. They haul their little collections out to the street where I’m watching the garbage truck a number of years ago - two containers. One get the garbage and ALL the recycling crap goes into the other. The sorting is part of what’s killing the business, but no way will people do it right themselves. What are they going to have, traceability and “Garbage Police”?
Rumor is in the City of Pittsburgh recycling program they are losing money on everything except aluminum cans.
Well, somebody is making money on it.
Don’t think of is as being thrown away, think of it as creating a valuable mining opportunity for future generations.
Get ready to pay more for garbage removal.
I recycle all of my plastic bags
By filling them with combustibles and tossing them in the burn barrel
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