"A skeptic ponders recycling" Topic

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I have a little to add to this. In a previous life, I was, among other things, the Recycling Manager at the factory. (I wore many hats…)
It was my job to reduce the trash stream, what with garbage pickup being more and more expensive.
In some ways it was easy. we would diecut various fabrics and sew them up for automotive interiors.
So, I fired up one of them there new fangled computers and started looking for stuff to recycle.
One of our main thingies in the waste stream was polyurethane foam. Not the kind that comes out of a can to fill cracks, but the kind you stuff pillows with. Or put in a car door to deaden sound…
I found some guys who would buy it, if we baled it and they even helped us finance a bailer. They would buy it, until they didn't.
So, I looked for buyers for PURE foam, and found one.
Every few months we had enough to fill a trailer.
In either case, it took about 15 man hours a week, between bailing, stacking, storing, etc. A trailer load of foam takes up some space.
We also had to buy steel banding tape, since foam likes to expand.
Every 2 or 3 months, we had enough to fill a trailer. So, we rented a trailer, paid a driver and got paid $1,500 USD for the load.
do the math.

We also bailed PURE polyester fabric waste and cardboard which paid a lot less.
Nobody even looked at backed fabric, the vast majority of what we produced.

But at least we felt virtuous.

At home, I filled 5 leaf and lawn bags with soda and beer cans. I got $9.50 USD for them. The price of aluminum has gone way down.

But at least I feel virtuous about it.

And before you slam me for a sluggard, read the NEW YORK TIMES article I link to. Particularly the last few paragraphs about the "religious" aspect.
And then go here:
TMP link
A lot of people cannot accept the fact that "ritual" and "faith" have a lot to do with their lives.

Yup, certain aspects of 'recycling' are apparently
articles of faith rather than reason.

I actually kind of agree, but still think it's a worthwhile exercise – the pure economics of it rarely stack up when you consider the man-hours involved, but I suspect there'll come a time when we regret what went into landfill….

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…"Here in New York, one of the most expensive labor forces on the planet is being forced to sort materials that third world peasants wouldn't waste their time saving," he wrote.

All recycling is not equal, and there are no uniform solutions.

For example, my condominium complex has single stream recycling dumpsters as well as trash dumpsters. The recycling dumpsters cost us $0 USD and reduce our garbage bill by an estimated 30%. The contractor who provides our service does not do this out of the goodness of his heart, or because he is required to. It obviously profits him.

My parents' hometown in rural Nebraska (pop.365) makes a small profit from their recycling. It only accepts plastic, metal, and paper products because the profit margin for glass is too low in that area. Besides actually making money, recycling also means they avoid having to expand the town landfill* or pay more to have the extra garbage shipped elsewhere.

*which would be nearly impossible given land prices

Locally we went to Curbside Recycling. The goal is to have it pay for itself in time, but that is 9 tons a day that is not going into the landfill.

A fleet repair shop always generates lots of cardboard from the parts room. Being a conscientious individual, I paid extra to have a cardboard recycle dumpster beside the 2 for trash, then religiously enforced all cardboard goes into recycle. Until the day I happened to be back there when the trash guy came. He emptied all 3 dumpsters into the same truck. I never paid for the scam again.

Recycling is presumably never a financial win. It is difficult to evaluate economically because there are artificial controls on things like garbage disposal (keeping prices low to avoid illegal dumping) and eminent domain (getting land without negotiation). The big tell is that the fed, states, and localities subsidize recycling.

The secondary concern is pollution generated by recycling. Generally, it is more using new raw materials if you capture total operational cost (collection, extraction, transportation, etc.) for both sides.

The real concerns are value judgments, which are the hardest part of economic analysis, as they are subjective, not universal, and often ill-informed (because in the modern connected world, nobody has the time to be fully informed on everything that has significant impact on their life.

The main values in play are valuation of landfill areas, long term effects of landfills, the utility of using new raw materials, the valuation of the job differential, and the ubiquitous "opportunity cost" in a closed system.

And yet for about a decade, people have been forcibly recycling copper wiring and pipes against their owners wishes (ie they've been stealing it). There is no simple answer here. My local communities reckon that they save money by recycling, which is cost neutral to the City whereas trash pickup costs money. Entire companies exist to take old computing parts and recycle the heavy metals out of them because it is cost effective to do so. The reality is that recycling is a complicated situation and no simple analysis will catch all of the nuances. It is likely that some recycling is useful while others are not, and that which is useful changes from moment to moment, far faster than the time frame necessary to set up a recycling effort just for those that are useful at that time. It is unlikely that the net result from the entire recycling movement is any worse than neutral.

Years ago while working in the office late one night I saw the overnight cleaning squad mixing recyclables from specially marked containers in with the regular office trash. I asked them why they were doing that… as I thought we were in the midst of an ongoing recycling campaign.

They looked at me as if I was crazy and said…."naaaah!…it's not worth the trouble."

I decided not to burst the office manager's bubble and did not rat them out. Who knew? Obviously she didn't.

I actually kind of agree, but still think it's a worthwhile exercise – the pure economics of it rarely stack up when you consider the man-hours involved, but I suspect there'll come a time when we regret what went into landfill….

There may come a time when society looks at all those old landfills and a resource concentration, creating jobs for Garbage Miners…

Damon.

That's a depressing article. But the recycle companies in my area seem to be doing well as far as I can tell. I wonder though.
--
Tim

We have two recycling bins at home. My wife keeps segregating paper/cardboard from plastic and glass. I tell here that I watch the truck come by and they toss everything together. I am happy to recycle even if just to reduce the stream to the landfill.
I walk away from the deposit center with about $4 USD every time I bring in my three full trash bags and realize that it would not pay for the gas if that was the only stop I made.

We cannot go on bury our trash.

We need to recycle and reuse it and what cannot be reuse needs to be burn to ash.

Hell we should even dig up every old trash dump and recycle the stuff.

I and my wife have very little in the way of trash since we fill up the recycling bin.

I even recycle nearly every plastic bag that we use.

You can put me down as a Hardcore Recycler.

You want to recycle? Keep your vegetable and fruit refuse, and start a worm farm in your basement. Then use the worm castings in your garden.

Now that's recycling.

Compost food waste if you have the space and can protect it from the raccoons, etc. that will otherwise have a field day with it.

looks like a lot of 'because it is the right thing to do' here as well.

Personally I have made some money recycling metals and make a point of doing so. I have also hauled paper, plastic, and steel cans to recycling centers when they were within a reasonable distance.

I also abhor waste. However the 'recycling' practiced by most cities is as the article notes not cost effective and in some cases actually has a negative effect on the environment.

My local communities reckon that they save money by recycling, which is cost neutral to the City whereas trash pickup costs money.

If you truly want to understand this, Google . Read the news, then go to the official government sites and read about the actual payments, tax breaks, and grants provided to people who are "making money" in recycling.

I am happy to recycle even if just to reduce the stream to the landfill.

This is the best and most rational argument in the lot on this.

Here the consumer side economics for recycling is a no brainer. The city provides free recycle bins as many as we want. Of the other kinds of bins, they charge twice as much for trash as for yard waste. The yard waste is mulched and redistributed. The recycling is, well, recycled. All bins come in 30/60/90 gal sizes, our choice. The three types are picked up in separate trucks, no combining.

Our recycle and yard waste bins were overflowing into trash every month. By changing to more larger of the less expensive bins, I reduced our trash volume by about 70% while saving $5 USD per month in our waste fees.

We recycle various bits of domestic waste curbside, and have the facilities at our local waste collection site to recycle more types of rubbish, and our local schools (I work at one) pays considerably less for waste collection if the paper recyle bin is emptied at the same time as all the rest of the trash.

I have no idea of the economics of all this, but it seems to me that reducing landfill, especially in a small country like ours, is a good idea. And reducing the depredation of sourcing new raw materials by reusing and recycling surely has to be good ecologically, too.

Besides, I hate chucking anything out if it can be reused somewhere.