I am putting this here because at some point, "global warming" or climate change or whatever the term du jour by the left is to suit their narrative is, will be uttered. I have been hearing more and more that there is actually very little recycling actually done. If glass is not completely clean, it's tossed. Any minimal contamination present; tossed. Not sure about paper. Even my local government said with their sorting station that it's not financially feasible and they are discussing going back to single combined container refuse collection. I also heard there was a segment on this on one of the newsmagazine shows, but I didn't see it. Is recycling going to be a passing fad? One of my thoughts was, if we ever need some resources, we could just mine the garbage dumps. I will also admit, I am not going to scrub and wash and remove labels and label glue before recycling plastic or glass, so if that is their requirement, they are in trouble. If plastic or glass are being melted down, I would think the contaminants would burn off or could be removed like slag.
Our solid waste folks are having a problem finding buyers for the recycled materials. IIRC, China used to purchase a lot, but no longer does. Metal may not be so much of an issue. Before disposable stuff became the rage, bottles were recycled all the time. You paid a deposit and returned the empty to get your money back. The bottles were then sterilized and refilled.
Residential paper recycling has always been energy/resource negative. Always will be. Plastic too. Metals are actually a good recycling target. Not so much the empty steel food cans, but aluminum, definitely. Electronics are a big problem to recycle. The MO used to be to ship them off to some TWS and let them deal with the massive pollution aspects of uncontrolled electronics recycling. Of course big government stepped in and came up with R2 certification which made the issue too cost prohibitive for smaller companies to do it 'right' and actually resulted in many recyclable / reusable materials going to the landfill.
I was thinking it might be due to possible tampering?? Some things like dry goods could be sold in bulk with the end user providing the storage container.
It's not cost effective. That's why you can't have the government mandating/dictating things like this. They set these "rules" which make it cost prohibitive to do the work, and eventually, it just dies out: train travel and most other forms of public transportation, solar power, wind power, etc. The only way these things will ever work is if the government gets out of the way and lets the free market do its thing.
Even that doesn't really make sense to me, glass melts starting at 1400 degrees and all the recycle glass is melted down and usually added to new before being used so it's at the temp for a while. Doubt any contaminants intentional or otherwise would survive that.
Mine stopped accepting cardboard and paper a few months back, and I cash in my aluminum, so that leaves plastic and glass that goes into the recycle bin. I only need to put it out maybe once a month now and most everyone's main trash bin is overflowing every week because they don't know how to break down and cut up boxes. Kind of sucks finding out you probably haven't been helping anything following the recycling rules all these years.
The problem with glass is, transporting it costs more than its worth. Cleaning/sorting add to the cost but are easy enough. There are a few places where the glass can be collected, sorted, re-used all in the same place. There are energy savings to be had in recycling glass as opposed to making new glass. Your source of glass, place to process, and re use need to in the same place for it to be financially viable these days. We used to have a customer that bought a lot of our glass sorting machines and he made glass beads on site for road striping. He got bought out years ago, no idea if they still even do that. Right now paper sorting equipment is all the rage. Because China/SE Asia restricts imports of recycled material (because of years of being sold garbage by brokers) these processors are having to invest in high speed optical sorters (our business) to get anyone to buy their output. We sell sorting equipment to the recycling industry and last year was our best year ever in the 40 year history of the company, so its not dead yet.
The other issue is that it's not really making a dent in trash reduction. Most pollution comes from China and India, NOT from the US.
i was raised on the recycling ideology in germany, wasting water to clean yogurt cups, then collecting them and sorting them into containers. same for plastic bags, foils , bottles, paper , cardboard. we were saving the planet big time. then our county built a trash burning facility. importing waste even from italy... the german trash? not enough flammable stuff in it (remember ? all went into recycling) so they had to feed oil into it, to keep temperatures up and not produce more toxins. then, one day i go mountain biking around there, and in a hidden lot, what do i find? all the recycling containers, that people filled with cleaned plastic, well sorted paper etc. it's a farce. and all that on a tremendous cost level. $35 per month for a 5 gallon trash can emptied every other week. your're just forced to recycle, otherwise you run out of room. over here, my wife still does recycle, i let her do it to "save the whales" or whatever. the only way to reduce trash is to avoid it but the paper plate and plastic cup culture in the US won't change as quick.
I like recycling and I'm all for it. I put all my cans, bottles and whatever in the bin and out on the curb and they come and get it. What happens to it then is their problem. If I don't care what happens to it why am I for recycling? Because it saves me a trash bag or two a week and I figure a bag costs me ~ $ .30 each for the kitchen ones and maybe $ .80 each for those HD heavy ones and that's $ .30 or $ .80 that I'm not spending to put my trash out. Save the Polar Bears and $ .80, recycle!
Scrap steel pays about $100/ton at the local scrap yard here in DFW. By the time you waste a half gallon of water to wash out the can, burn the diesel in the ginormous trash truck to drive around to thousands of residences and collect probably an average of one or two cans per household, and transport them to the collection center, sort them, crush like materials together into a bale for transport, transport them to a facility with an arc furnace and melt the steel into an ingot.... Well... Just don't seem to be worth all of the effort. The opinion above is solely my very slightly learned opinion and isn't supported by any facts other than those presented above.
My recycling bin is the big rolling trash can with the hinged lid that they flip into the truck with the hydraulic arm. My trash can is the same thing. I have an overflowing (and them some most weeks) recycle bin while my trash can only needs to go to the curb every other week or so. I don't know where they take all they recycling but they take it and i can feels good about myself. Unless i think about the fact that i drank all those beers that filled up that big ass bin... then i kinda feel like i need to go to a meeting.
Eff that. I crush all my beer cans into a dip can shape and throw them into a separate can out in the garage. Whenever I get to noticing the rotten beer smell, I bag 'em up and set the bag out behind the garage. About once a year I take all those bags to the recycling place and get my $6 and go buy a cheeseburger.
Ok - now I'm getting depressed about this topic. Locally about 40% of recyclable paper is lost due to broken glass contamination. Styrofoam isn't accepted for the same reason. Single use plastic bags clog up the sorting machines. Some residents use the recycle bin as a second trash container. At least the local trucks run on re-refined vegetable oil collected from fast food joints etc. Except for aluminum, what's the point anymore? And then there's this if ya really want to get depressed. https://www.plasticchina.org/
The garbage trucks here are required to run on CNG, much of it derived from the methane produced from the landfill. I thought that was actually pretty cool.
That material goes to a MuRF (Materials Recycling Facility), probably Waste Management, and gets sorted by machines and people. They bale it after sorting and sell it to brokers who find a place that needs it. Like glass, its a lot cheaper to re-use existing materials than to go dig up resources to make new materials. Plastics are tricky, but there is so much we cant just keep burying it.
