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

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161–170 of 293 posts

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

#161
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of a food desert?

Give me a break. First address the atrosious food consumption habits within the 94% of US population who do not live in so called food deserts before it can be used to justify the behavior of the vast majority.

Poverty? Marketing?

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Public WiFi share IP addresses.

>I didn’t know you guys kept track of MAC addresses or however else you track this stuff.

Revisit however else.

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

#163

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

Have you ever been to Australia where iron ore is less than 1 meter below ground?

Australia is rich in many minerals. Nonetheless, I'm willing to bet that people sending the metal to a truck to bring to a foundry is still cheaper than mining with all of its environmental impacts. Also, this: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/metal-recycling-where-australia-...

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

#164

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…

It was an illusion. Specifically, it was an illusion that allowed capitalism as normal to largely continue, with a bit of greenwashing here and there. Things you can actually recycle: Aluminium, iron/steel scrap, and to a lesser extent glass. Plastic was never recyclable in the sense of "circular economy indefinitely". Recycling was never an effective way to save resources, compared to its ugly stepsisters "reuse" an…

Paper must be recyclable, or else all of these "made from 100% recycled paper product" things wouldn't be possible, nor the many actual plants the recycle paper.

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

#165

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…

The movie "Plastic China" is must-see, in my opinion. It is streaming on Amazon Prime:

https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-China-Jiu-liang-WANG/dp/B06XV...

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

very specifically: don't take the plane, don't got to work with your car, and live in high density housing.

Not disagreeing, but looking at global temperature readings, temps were almost flat from 1940-1980. Weren't those decades characterized by interstates and polluting cars, and people living in suburbia? At least in the US. Was the temperature ramp-up from 1980-2019 a delayed reaction? Or due to emerging nations getting industrialized? Graph: http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TimeSeri...

Also note that US population was about 1/3 and 2/3 of present in 1940 and 1980 respectively. The developing world has grown a lot faster than that. So the number of people living the highest-carbon lifestyles is up while the number of people aspiring to do so is WAY up.

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

#167

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.

Or perhaps we could just stop creating it in the first place. Is there really a need for all of the one use plastics or the excessive packaging ?

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

#168
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In countries with good waste management I assume they are burned if they are not recycled. Other containers such as paper might sometimes even be worse as it will cost more energy to produce them than plastic.

>>In countries with good waste management I assume they are burned if they are not recycled Those countries are so rare that it's almost not worth mentioning. Vast majority of places around the world, including most of the developed world do not have "good waste management" by this definition. Even in countries as rich as UK, Germany and France most waste goes to a landfill, not an incinerator. Sure Sweden shows a go…

I’m not seeing the problem with plastic going into landfills. That means it doesn’t result in plastic pollution in waters and the ocean and is sequestering the carbon back in the earth.

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

#169

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...

I had the opportunity to do this about 15 years ago. I found it pretty shocking. The recycling center consisted of two large and open warehouses on the site of a landfill. Inside were a series of multi-level conveyor belts staffed largely by Hispanic workers.

In front of each worker was a station on the other side of the belt with several chutes for different types of materials. The workers operated in shifts with the belts moving at what felt like an impossible pace. The primary job requirement according to an overseer was not vomiting during a two hour trial run working in front of the belt.

Despite being in central Arizona, the interior was darkened with a confetti of small paper particles hanging in the air and covering every surface in nearly an inch of "dust". The only thing I could liken it to was the ash particulate in the aftermath of a volcano eruption. I wouldn't want to spend any time in there without heavy air filtering, yet I saw many workers operating without even light paper masks.

The experience brought home what the cost was for single stream recycling. Short of automation I have a hard time justifying that human sacrifice even as I continue to recycle out of habit.

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

#170
post #116
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a kid in Oregon in the early 70's when they implemented a bottle deposit. It was $.05 then which would be $.30 today. To bad they haven't increased the deposit amount. You also could return older, non-deposit containers at the beginning. This spurred me and my friends to clean every roadside and field within reach of our bikes. For a month we made more money than we had known in our entire lives. Then it was ov…

It's a dime now, with 90% + recycling rates. But 30 cents is huge.

It's about 30 USD ct in Germany (25 euro ct) for plastic bottles (that you have to pay up front). Very few bottles are not returned around here.
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