China isn’t taking any more crap from us:
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.
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.
Last year our waste removal service stopped accepting glass, though we can still take it to the dump.
The “too much trash” is on us, for failing to separate. We can’t have nice things. I question whether plastic recycling is… errr… salvageable.
On the upshot, waste is ever-renewable energy.
It’s not just ‘too much trash’, it’s any kind of contamination. See that public blue bin for mixed recyclables? If someone tosses a half full soda bottle in there with the lid not secure, all the paper in there is a loss. And if they toss in a plastic that can’t be recycled in that stream…
Honestly, there is little benefit from recycling paper when you can’t reliably control the waste stream start to finish. Better to just let nature recycle it.
Same for plastic. At this point, we should just decide that all consumer packaging plastics should be biodegradable and be done with it. Give the plastics companies the right incentives, and they’ll get it done.Report
I saw an article somewhere the other day about a research group that had come up with a new polymer. The unique thing about it was — and I think I have the process right — when it was exposed to the proper catalyst under the proper conditions, it broke down into the original monomer. The conditions weren’t extreme, so it wasn’t particularly expensive. It was easy to separate the monomer from the contaminants, including other kinds of plastic, at that stage. I remember thinking, “Hey, we might be able to really recycle plastic after all!”Report
This?
https://www.nomaco.com/blog-infinitely-recyclable-polymer/Report
Treasurer of California saying there is a crisis.
Woooo, didn’t see that coming. In related news the sky is blue.Report
The GF always takes recyclables from my house after a visit. “Why don’t you recycle?” she asks. Hey, if there was value, I’d be paid to do it and the law don’t make me. So I’m not. If the stuff is valuable enough, I’ll either do it and make money or someone else will….and that’s not happening…so I ain’t doing it. My time is more valuable.Report