Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumIs this the end of recycling?
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 that you havent 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 such as 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 cant 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 plastic in their green bins. When the program launched, Franklin could break even on recycling by selling it for $6 a ton. Now, Milner told me, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate. One-fifth of Franklins residents live below the poverty line, and the city government didnt want to ask them to pay more to recycle, so all those carefully sorted bottles and cans are being burned. Milner hates knowing that Franklin is releasing toxins into the environment, but theres not much she can do. Plastic is just not one of the things we have a market for, she said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/is-this-the-end-of-recycling/ar-BBUpk8p?li=BBnb7Kz
rampartc
(5,412 posts)but it is cheaper to cut pulpwood than to recycle newsprint.
SWBTATTReg
(22,133 posts)we should be able to process and / or handle the recyclables 100% on shore. I don't see how sending this stuff to China is doing any good for recycling (extra labor, shipping, etc. seems to add overhead), perhaps if boats are empty already going back to China, but I'd prefer to have finished goods instead).
Also, continuing to develop markets for these recyclables would help too, but obviously quite a bit of work still needs to be done in this area.
janterry
(4,429 posts)I've seen the proposal somewhere. Many packages could be replaced with cardboard.
But if the onus was on the companies, I'm sure they'd find an answer....pronto!
defacto7
(13,485 posts)Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)If you want to know how a Company Operates,talk to the Janitorial Staff and if you want to know about it's finical health,talk to the Mail Room .
Now,regarding Recycling in our area,I talk to the Person sitting in the Trucks Drivers seat. And,yes,they sort the Recycling because they get Tax Credits from State and Federal Agencies as part of their Hiring of and Training long term unemployed Persons. And once Recycled items reach a certain inventory level,to the Landfill it goes.
Some one mentioned retailers should take back all that overpackaging of consumer goods. That is one of the largest Recycled items. Great idea.