Recycling - Isn't Working Economically

[KmH]

Recycling, Once Embraced by Businesses and Environmentalists, Now Under Siege

 

[Braineack]

yesterday they double-paper-bagged me at trader joe's for one small item. I was bothered by the waste.

 

[Gary A.]

Interesting ... hopefully, better inspections with local markets for recycled materials will begin a local industrial small scale revolution here.

The cost of transportation hurts recycling. i.e. the cost of hauling the green wastes from Los Angeles' homeowner's yards to California's Central Valley (a world leader of agriculture) doesn't pencil out.

Sad that something as beneficial as recycled materials becomes an international political football.

 

[jcdeboever]

go back to glass, charge a deposit on the bottle, set up recycle locations at stores. No more plastic water bottles or anything plastic. Go back to the olden days and put that crying Indian back on tv commercials. I don't know, that's what my simple mind thinks of first. All my kids were raised with cloth diapers. We never bought paper plates, paper towels. We went to the grocery store with our own cloth bags to load groceries in. Never bought water, we used a filter system and glass. Everything was separated for recycle by bin and we had to drive it down the road. Food scraps were scraped into coffee can and put into compost pile.

 

[Fujidave]

I remember getting 10p back for a corona bottle years ago. So in my time we were the original recycling crew.

 

[JonA_CT]

I wonder how much of this is being hindered by single-stream recycling. It's terribly convenient for me to have one place to recycle, but I could see people being more likely to toss the wrong things when everything gets mixed together.

I wonder if pre-sorting at the household level into plastics, papers, and glass would mean less contamination down the line, and ultimately, more takers for the recycled goods.

CT charges a deposit for pretty much everything liquid goes into these days. It's really just an additional tax for me because I'd rather recycle it curbside than have to collect and bring to the store to recycle one item at a time.

 

[Gary A.]

Most communities use a three bin curbside collection scheme. One bin is for wastes, one is for plastics/glass/metal/paper and the third for green wastes. The multi recyclable bin goes to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), where it gets processed/separated into various component materials.

 

[ceemac]

Being rather rural here our local refuse site has become a one stop shop. there are places for almost everything including styrofoam, appliances, metal, building materials etc. When I lived near vancouver it was a half our drive in different directions to recycle this stuff. We even have a "share shed" for stuff we don't want that's still in good condition.

 

[KmH]

We humans aren't nearly as smart as like to think we are.

 

[smoke665]

@Gary A. touched on the elephant in the room, transportation. When we were still in business we had several contracts that included recyclables. Even over short distances it wasn't hard to rack up 60% or better of the value of the load in freight cost. Cardboard was mostly either a wash or a loss after freight. Rather than recycle the container into "new" containers, I think @jcdeboever had the best solution. Do away with the plastic and throw away containers. So much of the packaging is more for the consumers "convenience" than out of any real "need". We are our own worst enemy.

 

[jcdeboever]

Most communities use a three bin curbside collection scheme. One bin is for wastes, one is for plastics/glass/metal/paper and the third for green wastes. The multi recyclable bin goes to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), where it gets processed/separated into various component materials.

We are Blessed. Ours is right down the road from us. Open 10-2 on Saturdays. Free for recycling. If you have a couch or junk, they charge you a nominal fee for non recycled stuff. Paper, plastic, glass, yard waste, all free. However, we burn our leaves and such in the ditch out front, lucky there too, couldn't do that in California. I used to compost at the old house but no longer have a vegetable garden.

 

[pendennis]

We've recycled in our city for more than 30 years. However, the current trash hauler has made changes in what they'll accept, and now we put more into the trash than before, mainly in the form of plastic bags. We used to put our recyclables in plastic grocery bags, killing two birds... Now, the recyclables go loosely into 96 gallon bins, newspapers and all. You can imagine what happens on a windy day, especially when they use open-top haulers

The plastic recyclers have stated that they have a glut of shredded bottles, with no one to buy the shreds. They stated the problem is too much in plastic bottles. Even glass beer and soft drink bottles are crushed. Unless we go back to the beer and soft drink companies reusing existing bottles.

I agree that real recycling is to eliminate the use of plastic and a lot of paper. Everything made of plastic has its origin in oil; Elimination of usage in plastics goes to conservation of oil.