Posted on 05/30/2018 3:41:04 AM PDT by Haiku Guy
Oregon is serious about recycling. Its residents are accustomed to dutifully separating milk cartons, yogurt containers, cereal boxes and kombucha bottles from their trash to divert them from the landfill. But this year, because of a far-reaching rule change in China, some of the recyclables are ending up in the local dump anyway.
(snip)
Theresa Byrne, who lives in Salem, Ore., said the city took too long to inform residents that most plastics and egg and milk cartons were now considered garbage. “I was angry,” she said. “I believe in recycling.”
(snip)
In particular, exports of scrap plastic to China, valued at more than $300 million in 2015, totaled just $7.6 million in the first quarter of this year, down 90 percent from a year earlier, Mr. Pickard said. Other countries have stepped in to accept more plastics, but total scrap plastic exports are still down by 40 percent this year, he said.
“There is a significant disruption occurring to U.S. recycling programs,” Mr. Biderman said. “The concern is if this is the new normal.”
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The best-laid plans of Democrats and liberals often go astray.
What's the problem ?
I’m tired of being an unpaid trash sorter to make others feel good about themselves.
The religion of recycling is not what it seems, lol.
Look for the triangle.
A lot Plastics can be turned back into petroleum bases. That is encouraging but I doubt anybody in the u.s. is doing it, however I have seen videos of people in Africa and other poor areas in the world are converting plastic bottles Etc in back into a petroleum product and I guess one can burn it as fuel for their cars or perhaps cooking. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, the oceans are so full of plastics right now hopefully we can recover some of that garbage and put it in a plastic landfill somewhere but it is messing up the oceanic ecosystem at a cellular level. And anybody that doesn’t understand that needs to get an education cuz it’s going to be a major problem in the future. I think more so than air pollution.
I think the problem is that it costs us more to sort and clean the stuff than it does in China.
The last I heard the same was true of paper- the demand is very low so much of that set aside for recycling is sent to the landfill anyway.
When I lived in DC for a while, back when Marion Barry was mayor, they had garbage cops that were handing out warnings and citations for not seperating out the trash and recyclables. The trash guys would come around and throw it all in the same truck proving that it was just a scam. Not sure if they still do this today.
PBS had this covered 25 years ago when they traced plastic that was ‘recycled’ by Americans going to Taiwan on huge ships, where it was burned for fuel.
This is NOTHING NEW.
I have been told by a knowledgeable engineer that all our trash powers a large power generating plant 1 county over. Yet we have to ‘play’ with our garbage. Which I don’t do. We’re allowed to use black opaque bags. Which I use.
Same here. If recycling made economic sense, there would be companies eager to pay me for my (unsorted) garbage.
Some years back our local paper published a story revealing that the volume of recyclables trucked to the county recycling facility exceeded the capacity of the facility.
So a good portion of the recyclables are then re-trucked from the recycling facility to the solid waste facility and end up buried in the county land fill.
But the county government was still spending money promoting increased residential recycling.
I have always steadfastly refused to recycle.
It is against my principles to give away raw materials for free.
not much recycleing happens here despite the fancy transfer station.
The self righteous dutifully wash out their mikl container. and hand in their bottles and cans.
all of it goes to the burner, but lefties don’t want to face that truth.
Also forcing people to do the will of the state in small matters in their lives makes it easier to make them do more and more... think about it
when gas prices are low cardboard gets recycled
otherwise it is metal and electronics.
nothing else.
So residents are charged more to pay for separate pickup of "recyclables", they waste hot water washing out plastic containers, sort them out to the proper bins, then it all ends up in the same place at the dump.
The recycling company wins with a fat city contract. The city wins with higher collection fees. Well, two out of three ain't bad.
We “casually” recycle. We have a separate bin, which we pay extra for from our collection company.
We are going to quit, though.... after noticing that BOTH bins go in the same truck in the same way.
A lot of “recycling” programs are just eco-scams.
“Still, across much of the United States, including most major cities, recycling is continuing as usual.”
The article is wrong on that statement and how it is wrong also means the article’s focus on mainly China as the cause of the recycling problem misses what is really wrong, and not merely in the U.S. Pacific Northwest - OVER SUPPLY of goods put out for recycling that in many places now exceed what the end-users of the material can use.
Collectors and distributors of goods disposed of for recycling are finding they cannot get as much for the goods because supply is so much the buyers of the material won’t pay what they use to. Some municipalities are facing higher recycling charges needed to keep their recycling process in business. Even then, expect more landfill dumping of goods put out for recycling.
The good thing of recycling is being done more than ever now, and done so much that many more buyers of the material cannot use all collectors can deliver. They won’t pay the collectors what they use to, so the revenue vs profit margins of the collectors is shrinking, and to some the recycling has become not worth it. Cheaper to not do it at all, no extra loads to pick up on different days, pretending you’ll get your monies worth selling it - just take it to the landfill with the regular garbage.
It's an economic thing.
But then liberals don't understand the basics of economics.
They've got their heads up their asses in la-la land.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.