Posted on 03/16/2019 8:37:56 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country.
Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it.
Those are just three of the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed to huge price increases.
“We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now,” said Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, where recycling costs have increased in some cities.
Prompting this nationwide reckoning is China, which until January 2018 had been a big buyer of recyclable material collected in the United States. That stopped when Chinese officials determined that too much trash was mixed in with recyclable materials like cardboard and certain plastics. After that, Thailand and India started to accept more imported scrap, but even they are imposing new restrictions.
The turmoil in the global scrap markets began affecting American communities last year, and the problems have only deepened.
With fewer buyers, recycling companies are recouping their lost profits by charging cities more, in some cases four times what they charged last year.
Amid the soaring costs, cities and towns are making hard choices about whether to raise taxes, cut other municipal services or abandon an effort that took hold during the environmental movement of the 1970s.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
With exceptions recycling has always been a waste of natural resources.
It’s satisfying to see things starting to be correctly realigned.
The reality of what can reasonably be recycled is far short of the pipe dream.
The type of plastic, how clean the cans & bottles are, the cost of collection & transport, etc. all make it not worthwhile.
Add to this the fact that most of the Pacific plastic patch comes from the third world, China, etc.
But hey, it makes a bunch of people feel good about themselves.
I abandoned it in the 1970’s. Me, bears........smarter.
Well I hope my town doesnt stop the “free” pick-up.
It’s like having a 2nd trash bin.
Our county just stopped recycling glass. Now we are just supposed to throw it in the regular trashcan.
Ain't free if yer pay’n taxes
My town of about 18,000 which is run by Liberal/Leftist wackos diverted a lot of money in the budget from snow removal to recycling. We had a bad winter and they didn’t have enough money for snow removal. There would have been plenty of money for snow removal without recycling. So now they want new taxes.
Yep, I’ve said before that if recycling made sense, people would be bidding for my garbage. So far, no.
I believe aluminum is the only thing worth recycling. Reduce & reuse makes more sense.
Most of it goes to China to be burnt, but lately, trying to clean up its air, China just dumps it directly from the transport ships into the Pacific Ocean ...
I read a paper in Science back in the late 1970s that did the energy spent vs energy saved calculations on recycling. Recycling consumed far more energy then it would cost to just remake the product.
And we see yet another “feel good” program fail. The world awaits for real answers and liberals present smoke and mirrors.
Statement from millionaire AL Gore yet?
Yep. Pick up a barge full at LB and dump it 2500 miles out. go back for more.
I told my father a few years ago to stop wasting water ( it’s a fortune here in MA) to clean out bottles for recycling.
He never believed me.
I showed him the penn & teller he thought it was BS.
Whatever....it makes him “Feeeel good”
A plastic bottle or a Styrofoam cup becomes a a TINY dot when broken down.
It’s the VOLUME of this stuff that is the problem.
If homes had a shredder to break this stuff down it would be far more effective that the recycle business.
And do you think that taxes will go down if the pick-up program is shutdown?
Before the two bins i could line my sidewalk with a bunch of trash that would be picked up each week.
Now my garage is FULL of stuff i can’t throw out...just like all of my neighbors.
It’s ridiculous.
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