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

nytimes.com

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

#231

Post by djaychela »

masonic wrote: post #224
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

tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket No core charge or other incentive from the parts store?

Not on brake rotors, no[1]. They are always from new - there's nothing to recondition on them, they're only suitable for melting down again. I'd think they would be prohibitively expensive to handle for the retail chain, given their low scrap value.

[1] Aside from top-end stuff that has a separate bell and rotor, but this is maybe 0.001%, if that.

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

#232

Post by icelancer »

jandrese wrote: post #38
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…

I suspect you are correct here. We were shoving "recycling" in otherwise empty shipping containers and sending them to China where they get dumped on the ground and the poorest of the poor pick through them for the few things that are actually recyclable. I saw at least one person say back in the 2000s that single stream recycling was basically a lie, but it was worth it to get people into the recycling mindset. This…

Recycling is basically fake outside of aluminum (and other metals, and very specific plastics - but those are effectively impossible to sort properly by consumers [0]).

[0]: Remember all those codes on the bottom of bottles in the 1990s?

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

masonic wrote: post #224
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

tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket No core charge or other incentive from the parts store?

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by icelancer »

tanilama wrote: post #134
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…

Exactly. If the 'recycling' is actually a one way door to dump all trash on China and forget about it, it is not really 'recycling'. It is right about time that Western countries to come to realization that recycling need more smarts and efforts other than making it other people's problem.

> It is right about time that Western countries to come to realization that recycling need more smarts and efforts other than making it other people's problem.

This is not just a Western problem. A look at emissions and other pollutants show it is actually far less of an American problem and far more of an Eastern problem.

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

#235

Post by icelancer »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #81
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…

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…

> Things you can actually recycle: Aluminium, iron/steel scrap, and to a lesser extent glass.

Agree, with one caveat: Very specific plastics can be recycled as well, but it requires source sorting by consumers and industry and that's just not gonna happen.

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

#236

Post by icelancer »

khuey wrote: post #228
mirimir wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hasn't just been China. Pharmaceutical manufacturing in India is an environmental disaster.

Anywhere I can read more on that?

Viceland has a good series called Hamilton's Pharmacopeia which goes into some of this as well as other third-world drug manufacturing... processes.

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

#237

Post by icelancer »

username223 wrote: post #56
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…

There was, and still is, actual recycling. I remember taking the (sorted) recyclables to a recycling business, which paid by the pound. I remember watching the homeless guys in LA pick aluminum cans out of the blue bins early in the morning on trash day, presumably for the money. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the single-stream version were largely marketing (by weight). WM or whichever company picks out a few…

If a business or government pays you for it, then recycling is effective. If they don't, then obviously it isn't useful.

I never really understood why people could not grasp this basic concept.

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

#238

Post by abainbridge »

GordonS wrote: post #89
abainbridge wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, in the UK a punnet of strawberries in the supermarket has a little rectangle of bubble wrap glued into the bottom of it. It is there to reduce the amount of physical damage to the fruit. It looks like it couldn't do anything. But the food companies would love not to have the extra cost of the rectangle of bubble wrap and the gluing process. They do it because it works.

I always thought it's more like a nappy than bubble wrap; it's always stained with the colour of the fruit, so assumed it was there to absorb moisture from bruised fruit.

Oh yeah, sometimes there's a nappy thing, but I'd say bubble wrap is more normal for strawberries. I think the nappy thing is impregnated with something that absorbs ethylene. See http://www.itsfresh.com/Absorbing_Ethylene.html

The bubble wrap can be seen in a photo in this BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/2008/08/in_se...

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

#239

Post by grecy »

andrewstuart wrote: post #2

The packaging industry is going to fight tooth and nail so it can continue to spew out single use plastics for every single sales transaction that occurs. There's big money involved. Imagine the costs to the packaging industry if it was no longer allowed to create infinite garbage. I do find it strange that there seems to be zero noticeable social pressure on bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic b…

> zero noticeable social pressure on bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic bottles

Plastic water bottles - of any size - have been illegal in NSW, a state of Australia for many years. It has been fantastic.

Governments need to grow a spine and stop taking so much corporate money as bribes, and actually get to work making our world better.

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

#240

Post by blablablabla991 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #91
blablablabla991 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the logic behind this? How can the packaging industry force companies to order superfluous packaging? And if it isn't superfluous, getting rid of it might be a net negative?

>>> How can the packaging industry force companies to order superfluous packaging? By strongly opposing any initiative to implement returnable, multi use packaging, coming up with a bunch of plausible reasons why it doesn't work - maybe it's unhygienic, maybe things can't be washed etc etc

But if multi use packaging would work just as well other single use packaging, wouldn't the packaging industry make the same profits?
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