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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

#271

Post by sonar_un »

xorfish wrote: post #260
icelancer wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A much simpler concept is that you pay for the trash that you don't recycle. Switzerland recycles 93% of all glass bottles(color sorted by consumers) and 83% of all PET bottles. Everything else has to be burned in a plant with minimal emission to recycle energy. PET recycling is financed by a fee of around 2 cents per bottle that every manufacturer has to pay.

Remember also that in Switzerland you pay for your trash bags. A bag that you have to throw away costs €1-2. Recycling is essentially free.

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

#272

Post by pfdietz »

xefer wrote: post #186
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…

Re-reading this article from The New York Times Magazine, “Recycling Is Garbage” (1996) is really interesting today. It goes over the whole panic that kicked off the recycling movement during that time period. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-gar... I had almost forgotten the story of the Mobro 4000. For days the national press was obsessed with watching it try to find a place to offload. http…

Tierney had a followup some years later. Little had changed.

http://www.aei.org/publication/john-tierney-in-ny-times-recy...

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

#273

Post by dpark »

mirimir wrote: post #188
dpark wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the German model? I don’t recall there being a massive difference in packaging there except for the reusable (deposit required) soda bottles.

Extreme source separation. And laws that impose waste-management costs on manufacturers. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19411646 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19411250

Thanks. Will take a look at those.

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

#274

Post by choward »

birger wrote: post #263
icelancer wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three "Rs" were always about the first one: Reduce. People got caught up in the wave of recycling with the idea that somehow we could actually recycle all these materials with anything approaching reasonable effectiveness. Outside of aluminum, it's basically worthless - and in the cases of recycling paper, it has led to Superfund sites and terrible pollution. Rainforests are regrowing [0] as at least America has…

First step is Refuse. Refuse to buy anything that has unnecessary packaging. Otherwise Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I started bringing my own containers when shopping for groceries. Reduce my trash to 4-5 kilo per week.

I like this idea. I'm wondering how much extra time and effort you put into this. Loading up the containers to bring to the store, bringing the containers into the store, filling the containers, cleaning the containers, etc.

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

#275

Post by droithomme »

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…

Many years ago while dropping off a pickup full of cardboard I got to talking with the guys at the recycling plant about what they did with it. They said the aluminum, iron, and clear glass gets recycled in the US; non-clear glass is sent to huge piles of glass somewhere to be stored indefinitely; and all the plastic, paper and cardboard is sorted out, compacted and bundled, then put on a train that goes to a freighter that takes it to China and then they recycle it there. I researched the Chinese side and found the plastic stuff is stored in huge piles for years on end because it's all dirty and rural villagers eventually bike it to their house and individually clean each piece using spring water, and only then is it suitable for recycling. And the cleaning process toxifies their rural farm land and streams. The cardboard and paper is shipped to inner China where it is burned.

At that point I stopped recycling paper plastic and glass since it was clearly absurd and far more resources such as fuel and labor were being expended on this charade than if one were to simply burn their trash in a barrel in the backyard. I'd tell people about what I'd learned but no one believed it.

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

#276

Post by philwelch »

rdtsc wrote: post #19

> In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. I heard other cities doing that. It is interesting in municipalities where people diligently separate their recycling into multiple streams, everything neatly going into a separate bins and so on, and then it all goes and gets dumped in the landfill. That says som…

It's just an API migration. You can't actually start recycling until you start receiving pre-sorted waste streams, so you roll out the pre-sorted waste streams and just source all of them to the same landfill you've been using. Later, you can source some of the recycling streams (independently of each other, even) to recycling.

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

#277

Post by sct202 »

u04011 wrote: post #250
mirimir wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, I had no clue that it was just 20-30%. That's depressing.

German 66.1 percent recycling rate in 2015. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=...

Germany used to export 69% of collected plastic to China too, so they will likely face a similar crisis as America. https://qz.com/1310240/chinas-ban-on-plastic-recycling-impor...

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

#278

Post by gbacon »

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…

Public utilities manage residential trash pickup and incinerators. The state also owns and manages landfills. Yes, there are private or at least nominally private exceptions to both, but state-owned facilities have unavoidable economic calculation problems, and these — along with legislation that permits certain levels of pollution — spill over into other distortion.

We seem to agree that the cost of waste disposal is too low. It isn’t capitalists who are setting that price.

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

#279

Post by coldtea »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #85
nraynaud wrote: post #20

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...

Not all reactions are linear. Some have discreet "breaking points", after which become visible.

Also, if we compare 1980 to today, or even 2010, it's like the stone age re: production and consumption.

Population was just 4.4B -- now it's 7.7, almost double.

Large swaths were in far more dire poverty and much less consumption. Chinese industrial production was not a thing -- now it's the biggest industrial site in the world. The whole of USSR and Eastern Europe were communist (and would be for 10 years still).

And even Americans consumed much much less than today. Consider how little gadgets and stuff the average person had in 1980. Even clothes were much more valued than today's "quick fashion". Malls where just starting to be built everywhere (now the world's a big mall, and the internet can deliver to your door in the next day, so they aren't even needed).

US production here shows more than double too: https://www.macrotrends.net/2583/industrial-production-histo...

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

#280

Post by coldtea »

nraynaud wrote: post #221
almost_usual wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live rural in a rural area, use solar for electricity, work remotely, and grow your own food you are probably producing a lot less garbage than someone in a high density major metro.

nope, and by a very long shot.

Only if you don't count second and third order effects, to tout the usual "dense urban living".
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