3 thoughts on “I Wonder How Often This Happens and In How Many Places…”

1. I’ve been out of the game for a while, so my info is likely out of date, but back in 2018 or so, China enacted a new policy around accepting recyclables from the US (China processed something like 80+% of our plastics and other recycling, because it never makes financial sense to do it in the US). They essentially stopped accepting materials from the US. Enacted extremely restrictive requirements about contaminated materials (anything on or in your recycling that isn’t plastic) and otherwise rejected almost all of the millions of tons we used to send there. This is setting aside the fact that we were burning millions of gallons of fossil fuels to gather, separate, and ship these materials across the ocean for China to process it in not-EPA-friendly ways.

   The US doesn’t have the facilities to handle it, and like I said before, it never makes financial sense to recycle it. In one particular major US city, it cost about $5 per ton to bury trash in the ground and upwards of $90 to recycle that same ton, and you’d be lucky to get any kind of rebate for the resale of that material. This was with a new, state-of-the-art recycling facility. I’m sure that economies of scale could help, and better technology could reduce that delta, but recycling is and always has been a scam from every angle.

   Recycle your cardboard (if it’s clean) and your metal. Everything else is probably worse for the environment than throwing it in the trash can.

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2. I’m going to try to rationalize it… Any chemical process needs a reliable source of raw materials. And people are slow to change their habits. So, maybe if we all just pretend that recycling “works”, there will be enough success at developing the front end of the process (collection) to justify starting to operate the back end (where the recycling actually happens). In my Maryland neighborhood, all of the recyclables go into one bin, and are picked up by one truck, while the non-recyclables go into a different truck.

   They’ve started food scrap composting, too, and I cannot imagine a household that wastes enough food to justify the fuel for the vehicle that collects it.

   In this world, though, you have dishonest people who wreck noble plans. For example, aluminum can recycling has been plagued by people inserting cheap, heavy items into the cans before flattening them, to get paid aluminum prices for gravel. Or people who strip the copper out of expensive equipment (like HVAC coils) just to sell for a fraction of the scrap price. Or people who steal catalytic converters. The get pennies; the rest of us have to pay hundreds to repair the damage. It’s part of the cost of the corrosion of public ethics.

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3. Berkeley, CA, once (maybe they still do) had a program of separating recyclables from the trash– they had a list of things to recycle. They also had designated city employees hired to go around and inspect trash cans on pick-up days to see if anyone was putting recyclable materials in the trash. No fines that I know of, but if your trash passed inspection you got some kind of reward.

   That was decades ago, I don’t live where I would have heard anything about it anymore, so it may or may not still be happening. And you have to be aware: “It’s Berkeley”.

   I think most of the recycling stuff is a scam invented by burned-out 60s hippies.

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