As Costs Skyrocket, More US Cities Stop Recycling (nytimes.com) 356
Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; syndicated source]. From a report: Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents' recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it. Those are just three of the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed to huge price increases.
"We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now," said Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, where recycling costs have increased in some cities. Prompting this nationwide reckoning is China, which until January 2018 had been a big buyer of recyclable material collected in the United States. That stopped when Chinese officials determined that too much trash was mixed in with recyclable materials like cardboard and certain plastics. After that, Thailand and India started to accept more imported scrap, but even they are imposing new restrictions. The turmoil in the global scrap markets began affecting American communities last year, and the problems have only deepened.
"We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now," said Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, where recycling costs have increased in some cities. Prompting this nationwide reckoning is China, which until January 2018 had been a big buyer of recyclable material collected in the United States. That stopped when Chinese officials determined that too much trash was mixed in with recyclable materials like cardboard and certain plastics. After that, Thailand and India started to accept more imported scrap, but even they are imposing new restrictions. The turmoil in the global scrap markets began affecting American communities last year, and the problems have only deepened.
Recycling is a dead end (Score:2)
It won't save the planet. It only costs money.
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's a very profitable industry. The problem in the US is that people want the benefits without putting in the work.
No one takes the time to look at the number of the plastic before throwing it into the but. No one wants to read the instructions from the rate management company. Most people don't even realize you cannot throw contaminated materials into the recycling bin.
What makes recycling expensive in the US is the amount of effort required to clean up the material being recycled. It's a manual process, and very expensive.
What's killing recycling in the US is laziness!
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:5, Insightful)
If the cost of cleaning and separating recyclables at the waste processing facility is too high to make it worthwhile, then the same is true of pre-sorted and washed recyclables. It just pushes that cost to the individual waste stream sources, which is great for recycling companies, but not so great for anyone else.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, so you have never experienced the phenomenon that washing dishes is much easier if you do it right away instead of letting them sit for a week? Duh. The only way to get a clean recycling stream is by public relations. And Americans are often far worse than just not rinsing items. They often try to recycle all sorts of non-recyclable material. So it's not just "not clean" it's polluted with stuff that just isn't supposed to be there at all. If Americans can't be bothered to not put garbage in t
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:4, Insightful)
What ever happened to water conservation anyway? Am I still supposed to suffer with low flow bathroom fixtures while rinsing all my recyclables?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like a perfect example of economic analysis being insufficient analysis.
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly. You assume that "cleaning up" ends up as a net benefit, which isn't necessarily true. If it costs more to clean up recycling than the end product is worth, then you're ultimately spending more in other limited resources (energy, water, labor, etc.) to recycle it than you are saving. It can end up being a net negative, both economically and ecologically. Instead, we would be better off working to reduce the total amount of waste by making one-time use packaging more efficient and switching to durable reusable packaging where possible.
Re: (Score:2)
You also have to consider the cost of operating land fills. The one down the road is getting full and that's why they're pushing recycling.
Re: (Score:2)
Living rural, I take an even simpler approach... everything splits 4 ways:
* compostable stuff that goes into a working compost pile for the garden.
* flammable stuff that goes into the burn barrel.
* soda cans/bottles for the local school, who uses the deposit refunds for fundraising.
* Everything Else - which goes into the trash (mostly plastics and glass.)
Easy to sort, and much cheaper overall (the amount of trash that I personally haul to the dump is embarrassingly small, thus cheap as hell to dump.)
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's a very profitable industry.
Recycling is indeed profitable, but not for all materials. Here is a complete exhaustive list of the materials that can be recycled economically:
1. Aluminum
No one takes the time to look at the number of the plastic before throwing it into the but.
They do not, and they are not going to in the future either. If we are going to make recycling work, it can not be based on people being anonymously altruistic, and attentive to details of cleaning and sorting their trash. It is NOT going to happen.
The answer is automation. We need intelligent trash-sorting robots.
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:4, Informative)
2. Steel is also very economical to recycle, it's just not for households and consumers. But when you consider industrial scrap, iron and steel are the most recycled substance in the world.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/aluminum-makers-ditch-can-business-11552834801?mod=hp_major_pos13
Very few aluminum products want recycled materials in the first place. And the costs are no longer there to bother with now.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:2)
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
PSA's would cover this. There is no EASILY located info on what you can and cannot recycle so everyone assumes all plastic in any condition. The local waste collection company here has ZERO info about it. (I also can't find any info on when they do bulk/large item pickup - but that's monopolies for you)
PSA's could totally fix this, even if they only came home from school with my kids.
Re: (Score:2)
Americans need a lot more education. Hardly surprising that's the right answer for this.
Re: (Score:3)
Americans need a lot more education. Hardly surprising that's the right answer for this.
No, education is not the answer. Educating people on proper trash sorting makes very little difference.
People just don't care, and any solution based on them caring is going to fail.
Even if you get 95% to care, the other 5% will throw random garbage in the recycling bin and contaminate it.
The solution is to automate trash sorting with AI and robotics. Then people can throw everything in one bin, and one truck can pick it up and take it to a central sorting hub, where the sorting can be done properly.
Re: (Score:3)
Most metals can be recycled for a profit. Take a car battery in to the recyclers and see what they'll pay. Copper is another one that gets recycled straight off the pole along with manhole covers that are also recycled straight from the ground.
Re: Recycling is a dead end (Score:2, Insightful)
Projecting much?
My recycler flat out sent a letter their recycling program was going up because China wasnâ(TM)t buying it/paying as much.
Sorting isnâ(TM)t a challenge. Itâ(TM)s just not as profitable so now itâ(TM)s being tossed.
Re: (Score:3)
No, the problem is that China got tired of being our dumping ground and decided to end the charade. So we can't pretend anymore that recycling saves money by simply offshoring our trash on-the-cheap to China and pretending that they're going to actually "recycle" it instead of just dumping it in a landfill.
Real recycling costs money. It doesn't save it. So if you want *real* recyclin
Re: (Score:2)
There needs to be a tax on landfills. Calculate the amount landfill contributes to global warming, the true cost of global warming, and then levy that tax into landfill operators. Recycling may suddenly become much more profitable.
Re: (Score:2)
Make it a fine. If people want to use the recycling bin, fine them if they misuse it and use the funds to clean at the recycling depot.
Gave up. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OH man..what I'm sad about is, that you felt that you actually had to apologize for using the common time honored term "garbage man".
Wow...we're hitting new lows on PC-ness, aren't we.
Re:Gave up. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
They know all about garbage collection algorithms.
Re: (Score:3)
In the UK they call him the "bin man". So as not to imply that he himself is garbage.
Re: (Score:3)
Well implying he's a bin would make him a Dalek though, wouldn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
OH man..what I'm sad about is, that you felt that you actually had to apologize for using the common time honored term "garbage man".
I was rather trying to mock PC in general. I will have to try harder next time.
The good thing is, recycling is getting more real (Score:5, Insightful)
In a way this shift is good news, because it was all to easy before to throw a ton of crap into the recycling bin and pretend a problem was handled.
We are just now getting to a realistic point where we can truly decide what it makes sense to recycle, and what is really trash. Then we can make better choices about what things are made of, or what packaging they have. Like maybe paper products are not so bad, as we see with the rise of things like paper straws... remember how plastic used to be preferred over paper, and there was a big shift to move to plastic bags?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The obvious solution here... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The obvious solution here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just get Mexico to pay for it
Maybe someone could build a wall out of all the recycled crap, and get Mexico to pay for that.
Film at.... not 11? (Score:3)
Okay so
>China buys trash for cheap
>Marked costs are now artificially high inside of USA
>China stops buying trash
>Marked almost collapses
Is this even a recycle issue?
Part of a trade negotiation. (Score:3)
This is one move in the tariff negotiations between the US and China, which are still in the "playing chicken" stage.
(IMHO progress stalled when the loss of the House made Trump look weak, but will no doubt pick up again shortly - probably real soon if the state-of-emergency veto is upheld and/or if the Mueller investigation report comes out and it's "didn't find squat". But negotiations finish when they finish and don't always succeed.)
I expect that if/when an ag
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That ignores a fundamental problem in the US. The EPA has been stonewalling heavy industry since Obama started the war on coal. Permits are almost impossible to achieve, particularly emissions permits. It would make a shit ton of sense to separate with a pair of magnets (steel and aluminum), float out the plastic and paper, and burn those for energy, landfill the heavies. That would be a huge first step. There are techniques to automatically sort plastics, but they're expensive and probably not profitable.
H
Re: (Score:2)
No, because this has been applied to everyone, not just the US.
China changed it's rules to say that it would not import contaminated recycling waste as the environmental costs were too high. It had a massive impact on the recycling schemes in Australia as well. We solved it by putting the price up, because people had a massive meltdown when one city (Ipswich) said they were stopping recycling.
Silly Jobs Program (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You can recycle them into CO2 and energy.
Recycling mostly a scam (Score:5, Informative)
Recycling paper in particular takes so much water and chemicals that it makes no sense. All you're saving is trash pines, etc., that might be better just buried thereby sequestering some of the carbon.
Re:Recycling mostly a scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, a less cynical statement (and one I've heard from folks in similar positions) is that what specific materials are economical to recycle varies over time, and it's not practical to ask the general population to continually change what they do (or do not) put in the recycle bin. It makes more sense to have all recyclable materials collected into a separate stream, even if some percentage of them end up in the landfill.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A billion years go by and it's turned back into burnable oil for the next iteration of sentient life to burn.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd wonder if the following would be a good balance.
1. Mainstream deposit/returnable bottles (not required, just make it a thing again)
2. curbside recycling for aluminum
3. incinerate the rest after dragging a magnet through it to pull out recycleable iron content
Incineration would solve for Styrofoam (it's a great fuel) as well as polyethylene scraps in the ocean.
Re:Recycling mostly a scam (Score:4, Informative)
This has been know since time imamorial. The "Three Rs" have always been "Reduce, Reuse, Recyle" in that order. Recycling should be the last resort.
Where I live, bottled beer is sold in industry standard beer bottles. The brewery gets their bottles from the consortium, sticks their labels on it, fills it with beer, and puts their cap on it. At the other end of the waste stream, I turn in my beer bottles, get my $0.10 deposit back, and then the consortium takes the bottles, inspects them, cleans them, and sends them back to the brewery. On average, a given beer bottle will make it through the system 12 times before it gets lost, broken, or otherwise fails inspection.
We could do the same thing with all sorts of other products, but we don't.
Make everything compostable (Score:5, Funny)
then throw it in the landfill and let it, you know, compost. In my community they decided they would impose mandatory recycling using these huge bins twice as big as a garbage can. Paying the extra cost is required. So every week a separate fleet of garbage-truck sized diesel powered vehicles traverses every neighborhood, making a lot of noise and creating a lot of pollution, so we can all recycle. And you dare not put a used pizza box in with the rest of the cardboard because pizza boxes, by definition (even if they are pristine and unstained) do not count as recycleable. At the end of the run a huge machine somehow separates all this recycled stuff into appropriate piles for distribution to--somewhere. No one knows where it goes. But damn you feel good about saving the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Pizza boxes go into the compostable pile.
the 1970s meet the new reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Recycling is good, it's good conservation and makes good economic sense. What went wrong is single stream and not investing in the technology. We need to recycle where we can and stop just burning it or burying it, it's not that hard.
Re:the 1970s meet the new reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Recycling...makes good economic sense.
According to TFA, apparently not. Did you even read the headline?
Re: (Score:2)
Let me clarify it for you:
What went wrong is single stream and not investing in the technology.
China doesn't want mixed crap in their recyclables. Only question is why was it more economical or "green" to transport huge amounts of recyclable materials across the ocean to begin with. Companies like Waste Management essentially punted on their contractual obligations and shipped it overseas while claiming to be environmentally responsible; That's your real headline.
Re:the 1970s meet the new reality (Score:5, Insightful)
What went wrong was the gigantic push by environmentalists in the 1980's claiming that paper bags were bad, followed by the complaints that reprocessing(cleaning) glass bottles of all stripes were bad - because phosphate based cleaners were the primary source being used. But then saying how "environmentally friendly" it was to use plastics because the materials were already there, and it took less energy to make plastic bottles, packaging and so-on. And how phosphate based cleaners wouldn't end up in the lakes and rivers. 30 years later we're back at square one because what was quite environmentally friendly had bad optics at the time, and companies simply rolled over rather than deal with the environmentalist backlash of the period.
Sit back, enjoy the shitshow. Hell there's millions of acres of trees in the US and Canada damaged by pine beetles, that are perfect to be processed into well all kinds of materials...but those environmental regulations of the same period hamper clearcutting dead forests, even if the company is willing to stagger non-monculture trees(something that helped cause this problem in the first place).
Just dump it all in the sea (Score:3)
No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the old story where the first world takes advantage of the third world while claiming to be doing the right thing.
We were, for all practical intents and purposes, taking advantage of China and sending them what amounted to be mostly garbage. At the time, their companies could pay people a pittance to sort through it - and, If it wasn't recyclable, they ended up tossing it into their own garbage dumps. Eventually as China has developed, they got to the point where they didn't want everyone else's trash.
Now, the real dilemma is that while many people may want to recycle in theory, they don't want to pay the true cost of recycling. There is significant processing to be done if we want it to actually work, but we seem to think it should be no more expensive than just tossing stuff into the landfill - but turns out there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Include it in the price! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, the real dilemma is that while many people may want to recycle in theory, they don't want to pay the true cost of recycling. There is significant processing to be done if we want it to actually work, but we seem to think it should be no more expensive than just tossing stuff into the landfill
If you don't want to pay to recycle then the solution is simple: include the cost of recycling something in the price. Simply put, the originator of the product should be charged the amount it costs to recycle their product.
As much as self-proclaimed Libertarians may hate this, this is actually a Libertarian solution because you are only paying for the damage you have done. Likewise, hardcore capitalists will complain this is government interference but we've seen how things go when the government doesn't regulate the environment. [wikipedia.org] Furthermore, this is a market friendly opportunity as it will create recycling jobs as well as incentives to make low pollution and easily recyclable products.
Re: (Score:2)
There is significant processing to be done if we want it to actually work.
Alternative way looking at it, is that packaging is artificially cheap and is harmful for the environment. If we impose stricter requirements on what packaging is allowed, then we will reduce the cost to recycle it and will make the process more economical and more sustainable.
Why is there dozen plastic grades in packaging food? Why is plastic shells, that are hard to recycle, are used when biodegradable paper and cardboard can be used instead?
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
The easiest way to identify real recycling (as opposed to bullshit) is when the net "true cost" is negative.
People are willing to literally pay me for my aluminum cans. Or I can be a "nice guy" and give them to my city, and they can take the cans to the people who pay them.
But if no one is willing to pay for your trash, then there's a good chance that it's probably really trash (not effectively recyclable).
If the processing costs more than tossing it into the landfill, it doesn't "actually work." You should toss it into a landfill, because the processing is just another form of energy waste or pollution which didn't save anyone money compared to using raw materials.
Re: (Score:3)
Energy can be used from the sun or wind to recycle. That plastic that we don't recycle will remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. Recycling plastic is very important to the survival of humans on Earth.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you serious? We need that sun/wind energy to avoid burning coal. And plastic isn't "toxic" otherwise we wouldn't have used it for all our household items before discarding it. Discarded plastic will sit quietly in a landfill (and there is plenty of space for landfills, pretty much everywhere except Hong Kong) until some future civilization decides the landfill is worth mining.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
If the plastic can only be recycled at a financial loss, that suggests to me that you had even more downsides caused by recycling it, than you eliminated. It might be additional pollution caused by the recycling process, or higher energy requirements (which also may come with additional pollution) or something else I haven't thought of. What, exactly, caused the recycling to be more expensive than using raw materials? That will tell you what price you paid that you measured as being worse than the consequences of tossing it into a landfill.
(A toxic piece of plastic sitting around for a thousand years might sound bad, but it's not as bad as two toxic pieces of plastic sitting around for two thousand years.)
The only way this doesn't add up, would be if you're subsidizing something. If you're undercharging for the landfill (e.g. you consider the plastic sitting there to be very bad (i.e. high cost) but then you also let people dump there for "free" or nearly so, much less than what you consider to be the cost) then subsidizing the pollution can appear to make the recycling not pay. If that's what's going on, well, don't do that.
Re: (Score:2)
I generally agree, but isn't recyclable material today stuff that at least they know can be incinerated fairly well? Then at least it doesn't take more energy to deal with it. Even incineration for energy just seems like another form of recycling to me... though I was wondering how they scrubbed fumes from burning plastic (or maybe that is not incinerated but tossed).
I only recycle to get my money back (Score:2)
Re:I only recycle to get my money back (Score:4, Insightful)
If the state ever gets rid of these ridiculous deposit prices, you can pretty much kiss recycling goodbye.
And you just explained why they put this fee structure to begin with.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I only recycle to get my money back (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We just had a $2 Trillion tax cut. There's plenty of money to spend on recycling. The American people have decided that they're not interested in paying for it, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that its a failure. Recycling centers are shutting down because there is no profit in it anymore, and the deposits aren't bringing in enough money to keep it all running long term.
Well, the bigger issue in California is that you've got fixed incomes coming in ($.0x/bottle for whatever the local residents are using) but we've increased the minimum wage by 50% in the last five years (since 2012). Those employee operational costs don't disappear.
Re: (Score:3)
My experience visiting California and trying to get my deposits back is that the locals use the deposit as a moral justification for littering. The general sentiment seems to be that leaving their bottles and cans left outdoors is a way for them to give to the homeless by letting them collect their litter and get the deposits back.
Re: (Score:2)
This is not as terrible as it sounds. The deposit fee in the Northeast hasn't kept up with inflation, but in the 90s/early 00s it was commonplace for homeless to push around large shopping carts with aluminum cans / glass bottles. There were no recycle bins anywhere, but the homeless/poor would gladly take the containers from you. I would put out two recycling bags, both clear plastic, one with deposit items and one with the non-redeemables. Without fail, the deposit item bag would disappear long before
Re: (Score:2)
Check with your local schools and churches, etc. Here in Oregon, the local schools often take your cans/bottles, then recycle it all in bulk, where the money becomes fundraising for student activities and extracurricular supplies.
Need to do it right (Score:2)
in japan they meticulously sort the recyclables and deliver to community bins. Of course they also aren't lazy like us Americans.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect the Japanese sorting is ignored at the institutional level nowadays. If you look closely at the recycle bins attached to vending machines, they've removed the partition between "PET Bottle" (aka plastic) and "Can / Bottle" (aka aluminum), it goes into the same bin.
Recycling is not dead, this heading is misleading (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Need more trucks, installations, ... to recycle (Score:2)
One diesel truck for the garbage; one diesel truck for the recycling. Need a landfield for garbage. Need big installations for recycling (people to sort the recycled trash, machines to process it, diesel lift, ....). Another trucks to take sorted recycled stuff and transport it somewhere else. Explain to me where is the real environmental gain?
Re: (Score:2)
One diesel truck for the garbage; one diesel truck for the recycling
We used to get a weekly garbage pick up. Now we get garbage one week, and recycling the other. Same amount of truck capacity used.
Seems nonsensical . . . (Score:2)
The end of disposable plastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Too rich to recycle or too inefficient? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have always wondered what the affluence to efficiency ratio is for a country. Has the USA become so rich it can't do basic things like recycle anymore?
The USA has lots of resources in its country, let it use them as fast as it can and burn as brightly as it can. In the future the world will be a much more scares place and then it can buy everything it needs.
I don't recycle for just me. I recycle for my great-grandchildren, and yours.
What about AI and robotics? (Score:2)
We are on the verge of self-driving cars being commonplace. I see no reason why we cannot train robots to sort garbage.
One of the major advantages of recycling is that it diverts refuse away from landfill. But having to ship it overseas for processing seems silly. With enough automation, we can reprocess recyclables closer to the point of collection.
NO. (Score:3)
Actual BIG problems:
1) mixed recycling = contamination. We can't export our paper because it's hardly worth bothering over burning it, it's too DIRTY.
2) Sorting adds costs. Pre-sorting reduces labor, error rates, and significantly reduces contamination and mixing.
3) Quality of recycling. even the best... aluminum has huge problems getting quality high enough that major users pay MORE for new aluminum instead!
4) Supported materials. Too many types of plastic; too hard to sort and MOST are not recycled simpl
Re: (Score:2)
The shipping is essentially free, which is why we do it. We buy a ton of goods from China, ships come in packed to the brim with cheap goods, then the ships and containers need to go back empty. Putting some ultra low value cargo in them for the trip back makes sense.
Re: (Score:2)
The shipping is essentially free, which is why we do it. We buy a ton of goods from China, ships come in packed to the brim with cheap goods, then the ships and containers need to go back empty. Putting some ultra low value cargo in them for the trip back makes sense.
Fair point. But if all we're doing is buying their stuff and sending garbage back, then I think we're doing it wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue with AI/robotics is that it requires energy. I have no hard data, but I highly doubt the benefit of recycling will outweigh the costs of AI/robotics.
Neither do I, but I would think that speed, accuracy, and the absence of fatigue or health risks could make it very competitive.
And humans need energy too. Of course, they also need employment. It's not lost on me that robots displace humans. We do need to plan compassionately to retrain and re-employ workers who are affected by AI.
99% Invisible: "National Sword" (Score:3)
Make Manufacturers Pay For It (Score:2)
Shift 100% of the cost of dealing with packaging off to the manufacturers instead of the municipalities.
What Sweden does... (Score:5, Interesting)
...may not be to everyone's liking, and for my part - it's a PAIN to do what we do, and it costs tons of money too so it's a real problem, but here's what we do:
In most of Sweden, sorting your trash at home is MANDATORY. If you don't, you can get a fine billed to you for the extra work the recycling plant took sorting it for you, and it's usually am 80$ fine for each offense.
We have roughly 12 bins (2 major bins with 4 sections each), Metal, Plastics, Colored glass, Uncolored glass, Small cartoons, newspapers/ads, Food, batteries, lightbulbs, deposits, combustible and collectables (the collectables you'll have to call for, and they pick up like once a month or something).
It's crazy expensive too, I pay roughly 400$ a year for this "service" where I have to sort everything myself, yet - the recycling companies / garbies if you like... are fighting over the resources because to them, they're really valuable.
Re: (Score:2)
Five things (Score:2)
1. The main reason why we can't ship our recycling to other nations is very simple. It's not sorted. In Japan, they have bundles of each of the types of materials, about 40 of them, into which you have to place CLEAN, DRY, CORRECT materials. And, strangely, they burn the rest. We're just lazy.
2. In many countries the literal manufacturers of the packaging and containers HAVE TO RECYCLE IT AT NO COST to the consumers. For some reason, we treat negative impacts (bads) of capitalism as if they don't exist. C
Recycling needs abundant cheap energy... (Score:5, Interesting)
The true path to sustainability involves using more energy and less natural resources. Unfortunately, there is a common yet misguided ideal that we should minimize energy use through conservation and efficiency, and that expensive energy is good because it decreases demand. This kills recycling, desalination, synthetic carbon-neutral fuels/fertilizer, and other sustainability efforts. Worse yet, the preferred "natural" energy sources that are supposedly "free", require vast resource-intensive infrastructure to harness, store, and distribute. The massive environmental harm is tacitly accepted as necessary for saving the world, and if these efforts are scaled up, the results will be devastating.
It is rather remarkable how many have been blinded by dogma and propaganda, and can't even acknowledge the most basic tenet of minimizing resource use and impact on the natural world. Instead, the (fossil-funded) "green" lobby insist that we pave the world with renewables and continue their subsidies indefinitely, all without any plan or even a fund to manage their final disposition. The reality is that renewables only transform fossil energy and natural resources into a new waste stream. How can wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries ever be sustainable if we can't afford to recycle them?
Environmental impact is ultimately a function of energy density. Fission (and fusion) generate enormous amounts of energy from a tiny quantity of material, are produces even less waste, all of which is contained and self-funded by per-kWh fees. Advanced technologies are even more effective, and produce invaluable isotopes for medical and space applications. With rational policy, not only will it be the cleanest energy source, but also the cheapest. Then, economics alone will drive rapid decarbonization. Nuclear is already the safest by any objective measure, and even the very small risks can be virtually eliminated.
Where is money going? (Score:2)
What are US cities using their money for? Moving waste around should not be an onerous task for any US city considering their tax rates and other spending.
Pensions?
Services for non citizens?
Education?
Roads?
Police?
Welfare?