Posted on 12/29/2008 11:59:05 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of unwanted recycling is being stockpiled as contractors struggle to sell off used cans, newspapers and cardboard collected from households.
Experts estimate that up to 15 per cent of all recycling is now being stored in warehouses and ports, waiting for a buyer.
Some of the waste could be stuck there for a year.
One in four councils has asked for more storage capacity to cope with the problem, which is likely to have worsened because of the volume of recycling generated over Christmas.
Councils have been forced to recycle more by facing higher penalties for every tonne of waste that they dump in landfill to help the UK hit new European Union recycling targets.
But demand for recycling material has dropped sharply since October as sales of new cars, white goods and new homes - which provide a market for recycled material - have tailed off in the global downturn.
The price of recycled cans has fallen from £200 a tonne to £20 a tonne, while paper and card has also dropped from £60 a tonne to just £10 a tonne.
Prices have now fallen so far that the cost of making new plastic is cheaper than reusing the recycled material. The result has been a big increase in stockpiles of recycled rubbish, which contractors are battling to clear.
The Environment Agency said one way to ease the situation was for people to give more of their waste to charity, rather trying to recycle it.
The news comes after research by The Daily Telegraph found that three in four councils diverted nearly 200,000 tonnes of recycled waste to landfill last year.
Greencycle, a firm which collects waste for councils in the north east of England, said it had been forced
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I’m given to understand that the only really form of recycling that is commercially viable is still only that of aluminum. Because of the enormous energy requirement for smelting it.
Everything else is just another heavily-subsidized green boutique luxury.
Why am I picturing Monty Python? “Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down here.”
My understanding too
I always recycle it
Everything else is just another heavily-subsidized green boutique luxury.
Yeah I chuck it in the trash or the recycling bin depending on mood and circumstance
Sorry but fuel prices are low and this stuff should just go in the landfill even if it is 20 miles away. Archeologists of the future will have a treasure trove
They hall ours to the dump. This being cal it is taken out of state.
my understanding is that
tin-plated steel cans are well
worth recyling,
or not
“The Environment Agency said one way to ease the situation was for people to give more of their waste to charity, rather trying to recycle it.”
Here in the colonies it’s considered bad form to drop one’s trash in a Goodwill box and the city hardly qualifies as a charity.
Iron and steel?
Doesn’t that go to the junkyard?
The county didn’t issue us a bucket for old cars and washing machines.
Junkyards are recyclers of all sorts of metal, including aluminum. When our city picks up appliances they simply send them to our local junkyard.
Cars they won’t pick up due to size.
Rather than comply with the Big Brother regulations, I would be taking late-night trips on dark roads, leaving a trail of trash behind me.
Recycling has always been a scam.
1) Seattle’s paper recycling for years was quietly shipped to a Taiwanese furnace for turning into electricity.
2) The fuel, trucks and labor used for the extra trucks to pick up recycling can’t possibly be paid for by the value of that which is picked up.
3) If you’ve ever been to North Dakota, you know the entire country’s waste could be held in one county for a millenium, and probably not be noticed.
4) Most places, they charge you to haul away your clean green, then sell you the compost. Not in Fargo: Both are free. Why, then, do other places charge? Because they are idiots or because it is a convenient tax? (you pick)
5) If recycling were advantageous, there would be a free market for it, and companies would pay YOU to haul it away. Since they don’t, it proves recycling’s ineffectiveness.
(Could continue all night)...
Ding! Ding! We have a winner.
You also have to take local graft into account too though. I'd imagine that if it were actually profitable (as it probably is for aluminum), and some company tried to pick it up, there would be repercussions from the locality due to concessions made for the city's recycling contractor.
You got it.
Our county has mandated recycling. Only now the company that picks up says they won’t do it much longer. No money in it.
Kind of funny.
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