Posted on 03/09/2019 7:18:11 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
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 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 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 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 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 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.
*SNIP*
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
A-HA! Of course it’s Trump’s Fault, what with his stellar economy and more money in our pockets! When we were all broke, jobless and depressed under Comrade 0bama - Life Was Good!
*SNORT*
“The best way to fix recycling is probably persuading people to buy less stuff, which would also have the benefit of reducing some of the upstream waste created when products are made. But that’s a hard sell in the United States, where consumer spending accounts for 68 percent of the GDP. The strong economy means more people have more spending money, too, and often the things they buy, such as new phones, and the places they shop, such as Amazon, are designed to sell them even more things. The average American spent 7 percent more on food and 8 percent more on personal-care products and services in 2017 than in 2016, according to government data.”
I wish
“Scrap” Aluminium [and Copper based Alloys] is still valuable.
Catalytic Converters and Stainless Steel are still winners too.
I can remember doing paper drives as a kid. I haven’t seen any of those in a while.
Our recycle centers no longer recycle glass. GLASS!! Asked why, the guys who work there (yes, just guys...) had no idea why...
I’ve never recycled. I guess that’s bad.
Threw the garbageman a 10 spot every now and then at my last house and I was good to go.
Back when there were deposits on returnable bottles, there was a cottage industry of kids with wagons seeking them out to earn spending money. Of course those bottles were stouter made and worthy of reuse. Now the idea is to take used products and and turn them into new material in order to make something else out of it.
Need to make it easier to open a landfill, its ridiculous to be trucking garbage halfway across the state.
Smarter packaging would help.
The Emperor is wearing no clothes!
Another way to to start making stuff that will last, like they used to.
No more planned obsolescence.
Build washers and dryers, and refrigerators and stove to actually LAST more than 15 years.
Make parts available so people can repair instead of replace.
“Back when there were deposits on returnable bottles, there was a cottage industry of kids with wagons seeking them out to earn spending money.”
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There still is in Massachusetts and now it’s old Asian ladies returning them,at least in my area.
.
Alsostop with all the disposable everything, from dishclothes to toilet cleaning wands.
I always try to buy stuff I’m not going to throw away, although automotive fuels seem to disappear on their own and need to be replaced all the time.
My Town:
100 a year for the Blue Bin(recycle)
Only take Aluminum and glass bottles,newspapers card board.
No styro,paper coffee cups or plates, batteries, nope.
Only premo items WMI can sell
Its a rip off, period as they dont take everything
I’ve always lived in places where recycling was a Big Deal, so I’ve recycled as an adult and also since I was a kid - because Grandpa never wasted a thing. Coffee cans were his ‘recyclable of choice.’ There wasn’t a thing he couldn’t do with them, but they mainly organized all of his OTHER salvaged junk.
Sawed down, they made the BEST bait cans, though. ;)
I have a quilt that I use as an art piece in my home. I’ll never part with it, because it’s made from scraps of a lot of the clothing we all wore. You wore your clothes until they plain wore OUT. So many fun memories of my family when I look at it. Scraps of sun dresses, Grandpa’s old fishing shirts and his Mr. Greenjeans chino pants he always wore, Grandma’s flowery housedresses and aprons, etc. :)
I’m a huge re-user and composter. But, I do it for MY personal benefit. I kind of thought ‘recycling’ was a scam of epic proportions making a handful of people wealthy.
Boxes all over the place??? It’s crazy....Time to put a chute in the walls instead.
I can still picture the bundles tied with twine and piled 6 feet high in the garage.
In CA there used to be recycling stations everywhere where they would redeem the 5 cents per can the state charges on your beer and soda.
The state would reimburse them the 5 cents and they’d sell the aluminum and glass at market rate. Since everyone was bring the commodity to them, it was profitable business.
There are none left. All out of business.
There will be an initiative to stop the 5 cents per can/bottle recycling fee. And since only about 1/2 was being recycled under these favorable conditions, the state used to derive 10s of millions in revenue from it every year.
We have dumpster divers here in Upstate...5 cents a bottle.
Glass and everything else is a loser. Recycling has been a net loser for decades, but it makes people feel good, so we persist.
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