As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling • Hacker News Board

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#151

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #18

It makes me wonder if we were ever really recycling, or if "recycling" was a marketing buzzword for "cheaply dumping your trash in China". I seem to remember a lot of controversy over recycling in the 80s and early 90s, with my local town government insisting it was too expensive. Suddenly everything changed in the late 90s, right around the time that globalization took off, and recycle bins took off everywhere. By t…

This is one of those things where you can probably just go to your local sorting center and ask for a look at what they do.

Cardboard is profitable to recycle domestically...

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#152

Post by hombre_fatal » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

username3 wrote: post #149

kenrose wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean IP addresses. :-)

IP addresses change.

You only need an IP address overlap one time to link two accounts. It's pretty much guaranteed to happen if you aren't actively avoiding it.

But let's revisit the fact that remote servers cannot see a MAC address.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#153

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

mikewilliams wrote: post #119

mdorazio wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't all trash, but a significant portion was. Without expensive sorting machinery, recycling is generally only profitable with extremely cheap labor and a disregard for environmental damage caused by tossing the unprofitable stuff in the nearest dump. What was profitable for 1990s China would not have been profitable for the US.

Recycling will never be profitable, but we can't just keep burying trash and forgetting about it, or maybe we can, I don't know.

Make sure to tell your local scrap yard.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#154

Post by grizzles » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

A problem crying out for a robotic solution.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#155

Post by rasengan0 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:35 AM UTC

So is there a startup disruptive market here?

Since less than clean recyclables is the new environmental pollution, is there an UberTrash in sight?

Honey, I have a new gig, I pick up trash and my hours are flexible. Wee!

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#156

Post by kingkawn » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:41 AM UTC

Someone I knew was trying to make a film a couple of years ago following the recycling stream from his neighborhood in nyc to China. His takeaway was that basically nothing is recycled.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#157

Post by ineedasername » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

czps wrote: post #98

dang wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There are legit use…

Generally when I reach a certain number of points I destroy the account by changing the password to something that I can’t remember and I don’t use an email address with my accounts. There is no delete option that I’m aware of. I’ve been on the site for a long time. Since the beginning. I didn’t know you guys kept track of MAC addresses or however else you track this stuff. I won’t do it again. This is the push I’ve…

>This is the push I’ve needed to stop coming to the site. Thanks. I mean it.

Welcome! Always nice to see the trollishly inclined see themselves out.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#158

Post by skriticos2 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

sverhagen wrote: post #142

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that anything metal gets recycled. It's much cheaper to recycle than dig more ore out of the ground. tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket

I assume there's a lot of things cheaper to recycle than to create new, but the problem is how to extract/separate it out of an overwhelming stream of unrelated materials, is it not?

Person from Germany here where we have 4 different bins per household - paper, recyclables (metal, plastic), compostables and dump (+ glass by color, batteries and electronics at dedicated sites). We get to a recycling rate of about 20-30% (effective at plant) with really wanting to and having it ingrained into our culture.

Recycling is hard at the best of times. Unless packaging gets much better at identifying as recyclable it will be a long road ahead (it's the small things, black plastic is hard to identify and get's burned, composite plastics are problematic, like different plastic foil over plastic canister). At least people think about it around here, but it is a very hard problem.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#159

Post by mirimir » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #151

nostrademons wrote: post #18

It makes me wonder if we were ever really recycling, or if "recycling" was a marketing buzzword for "cheaply dumping your trash in China". I seem to remember a lot of controversy over recycling in the 80s and early 90s, with my local town government insisting it was too expensive. Suddenly everything changed in the late 90s, right around the time that globalization took off, and recycle bins took off everywhere. By t…

This is one of those things where you can probably just go to your local sorting center and ask for a look at what they do. Cardboard is profitable to recycle domestically...

That's true. Sort of. Clean cardboard is recyclable. But cardboard with broken glass, not so much. And not cardboard with food waste. Or even cardboard with too much plastic tape.

Recycling only works with source separation. But how does that work when there are so many types of plastics in use? And worse, stuff made from multiple types of plastics? Often now plus aluminum and paper.

It's a mess.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#160

Post by barney54 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:46 AM UTC

mikewilliams wrote: post #119

mdorazio wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't all trash, but a significant portion was. Without expensive sorting machinery, recycling is generally only profitable with extremely cheap labor and a disregard for environmental damage caused by tossing the unprofitable stuff in the nearest dump. What was profitable for 1990s China would not have been profitable for the US.

Recycling will never be profitable, but we can't just keep burying trash and forgetting about it, or maybe we can, I don't know.

What matters is what is being recycled. Some recycling makes economic sense today—metals for example and car batteries. The recycling of some plastics makes sense, but it has to be sorted.

There is plenty of land for landfills, but for recycling there may always be things that makes sense to recycle and things that just don’t pencil out.