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There's no real market for used plastic or metal (other than cleaned aluminum). And the newsprint recycling market is saturated with a 50 year supply at this very minute.

The market for recycled materials is down, but not saturated. Here are some charts:
Metal prices at the Larimer County recycling center.
Paper prices at the Larimer County recycling center. (ONP#8=newspapers, OCC=corrugated cardboard, OMG=magazines and catalogs, OMX=paperboard and low-grade paper)
Plastic prices at the Larimer County recycling center. PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastics include items such as soda and other drink bottles. HDPE-N (high density polyethylene-natural) includes milk jugs and other similar "natural-colored" containers. HDPE-C (high density polyethylene-colored) includes brightly colored items such as laundry detergent bottles.

My guess is that prices are down because the economy as a whole is down. Less manufacturing means less need for raw materials. But - the charts are clear. Recycling is an economically profitable endevour. Except for idiots in the NorthEastern part of the US, the recyclables are usually not being wasted in landfills - they are being sold to US industry which uses them as raw materials.

Recycling is an economically profitable endevour

If it was, every recycling plant in the country would be running 24 hours a day. And cities and counties wouldn't be dumping that potential profit into holes in the ground.

Those markets are for cleaned products, not garbage. They exist solely because of government mandates in various parts of the country require them or require cities to "clean" their garbage. The real cost to sort and clean garbage to make it sellable makes the entire endeavor of "recycling" unprofitable without government subsidies or tyrannical environmental mandates.

I don’t know much about recycling except that at one time the city charged us by the size of our garbage can but gave us recycle bins for free. So initially we were charged for a 20gal can and recycled the rest of our stuff. It worked pretty good for us and cost about $9.00 per month.

Then the city decided to get out of the recycling business and farm it out to an outfit that handled the county. They now charged for the recycling service. Then the city decided to get out of garbage collection all together and farmed it all out to the county service. Now we still have the 20 gallon can plus three plastic, wheeled bins for yard clippings, paper/cardboard, and glass/foil/cans/plastic.

Now we have a garbage truck that picks up garbage, another that picks up papers/cardboard, another that picks up glass/plastic, and one that picks up yard clippings – four trucks that come by at various times every Wednesday. Oh, it costs $48 for two months now – up from $43.40 last year.

I don’t know if they’re making money from the recycling or if they’re just making money from me, but I bet it doesn’t get cheaper next year… Ha!

Hey! Do me a big favor and just recycle all this super subsidized garbage and graphs, etc.

The State of CA keeps issuing these unfunded mandates on it's County governments to reduce solid waste into the landfills by 50% by a date five years hence! Only about 3 or 4 of the 58 Counties have been able to comply.

You recycling cultists are doing very little to solve anything economically and are simply making everything cost more through government mandates. The only ones profiting from your fanatical preaching is Waste Management, Inc. and a few other monster corporations.

That's quite the cryptic screen name you have. Is it always dark where you live? Or what?

Besides, what has any of this recycling got to do with the abject failure of another radical experiment by a governmental entity that can't shoot straight?