Dang. Guess i'm a little late ...
Posted on 12/08/2008 9:55:59 AM PST by icwhatudo
The economic downturn has decimated the market for recycled materials like cardboard, plastic, newspaper and metals. Across the country, this junk is accumulating by the ton in the yards and warehouses of recycling contractors, which are unable to find buyers or are unwilling to sell at rock-bottom prices.
---snip---
The downturn offers some insight into the forces behind the recycling boom of recent years. Environmentally conscious consumers have been able to pat themselves on the back and feel good about sorting their recycling and putting it on the curb. But most recycling programs have been driven as much by raw economics as by activism.
Cities and their contractors made recycling easy in part because there was money to be made.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Local governments ran a great scam, they cut back trash pickup to only once a week (while not reducing your taxes) and then forced you to recycle so they could sell your material to make even more money off your labor.
If it really was about the environment, people would not get fined for "stealing" someone else's recyclables. That was the sign there was something else going on.
Schadenfreude on the recycling nazis.
I approve of recycling as a concept, but it has to be economically viable.
There are problems in the original materials industry, too. A friend who buys steel from US Steel in Cleveland told me yesterday that US will try to honor orders submitted this year, but does not intend to fill orders placed in January. Sounds like demand is so low that it’s not economical to run the mill at all.
Hard to care about an extra few lbs of carbon emissions when you're trying to stay warm. Or figuring out a way to feed your family.
“Schadenfreude on the recycling nazis”
What schadenfeude? The free market solution just fell apart. Guess what? People still need that damn garbage collected.
Now, instead of making money of it, it’s a pure expense, a 100 % outflow from the tax purse.
Freepers have lost their damn minds.
blue trash can ping
I agree with you...
From what little I've read on it, recycling metals (especially Aluminum) saves money, simply because the processes used to smelt them are so energy-intensive.
The rest is just demand-driven fluff.
They might even start bringing it back.
Previously posted at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2144756/posts .
On several subjects bttt!
Weird-I title searched (as I always do before posting an article-especially one a day old) and it did not come up. Now it does.
Have you seen the price of copper lately? The collapse of China's economy brought all commodity prices tumbbling down with it. 57,000 factories closing is going to have an impact, even if they are in China.
It was that fact kept 'secret' for 4-5 months until after the olympics that snuk up and bit our markets in the @ss.
#14 housing grade wire went from $63 a 20 lb roll to under $13 practically overnight.
Scrap copper is less than a 1$ a lb. now. So your pretty safe trusting the ground circuits in your neighborhood again.
Hey, what a break for Obambi !! He can hire a boat-load of people to sort out the recyclables and thereby put a down payment on his “I’m gonna create 2 million jobs” promise!
LOL
BPE
The situation has also been rough on junk poachers — people who made a profitable trade of picking off cardboard and other refuse from bins before the recycling trucks could get to it. Those poachers have shut their operations, said Michael Sangiacomo, chief executive of Norcal Waste Systems, a recycling and garbage company that serves Northern California. “I knew it was really bad a few weeks ago when our guys showed up and the corrugated cardboard was still there,” he said. “People started calling, saying ‘You didn’t pick up our cardboard,’ and I said, ‘We haven’t picked up your cardboard for years.’ ”
Yellow brass was at $2/lb. It is now at $0.48/lb.
It was also a profit center for the garbage company. I pick up your garbage for say $10.00 per month. I pick up your garbage AND your recyclables for say $15.00. Then all the stuff goes to the land fill anyway.
Scrap steel in central CA has gone from $275/ton to $5.
Waste not want not used to be our grandparents motto. You’d think recycling material would be cheaper than having to make new material.
on the up side, the cost of ammo should start going down again.
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