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Why keep recycling?

With China not buying plastic waste anymore, most of the plastic containers we put in the recycling bin go to landfills. I listened to a podcast interview with a recycling economist who pointed out, when the environmental costs of transportation and processing are factored in, the only things worth recycling are metals and sometimes paper.
In the same interview the major of an Arizona city said the maintain the collection side of their recycling program going even though a lot of the stuff goes to a landfill. He is confident ways of recycling plastic are on the horizon and he doesn’t want people to get out of the habit of separating trash.
I hate to throw things away. I almost always refuse to bag my purchases at stores, as I usually have my own bag. If I get carry out to take home I refuse the sporks and napkins. When I can buy something in a can vs plastic I do it. When I think about trash I try to think about how to not use it in the first place or how to re-use an item before I consider recycling.
It’s astonishing how ignorant people are of the value of “trash”. I was at the dump last week and I watched a guy unload a pickup load of aluminum siding into the landfill. He paid at least $35 to dump it and stood and watched as the dozer driver buried it. He could have taken it to the metal recycler on the other side of the county and sold it for about $20.

I was having a talk with my dad about this a few days ago. He was saying the #1 plastic (water bottles and most of the containers that fruit/veggies come in) has little to no recyclable value but the #5 (I think that's what it was) has value. At a local farm drainage tile plant, they use #5 (again I think) in making plastic pots and some other things. I guess it's not so much plastic as they type of plastic that matters.

When I grew up, singular bottles of water didn't exist. Water was "free" and came out of a garden hose for a cool drink on a hot summer day....

A new practical use for water bottles is to fill a bag and use it in place of cement walls or Armco or hail bails or tire wall at motorcycle road race events

From what I’ve heard sliding into one is no big deal and the riders love them

I think my first job may have contributed to my recycling penchant. I was the guy handling all of the returned soda pop bottles at the only local Kroger store in the early 80s. It made sense back then to me, and still does.

I try to recycle/re-use whatever I can, and get irritated when others don't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cabmando (Post 10533333)

It's also the size of the item. I listened to a report also that said sorting machines can only deal with items of certain sizes, so even if some forms of plastic are "recyclable", they don't get recycled.

There used to be a recycling center here local to me that I used before our trash company started picking up recyclables. That place was busy every weekend with people dropping stuff off. Then it closed. The guy that ran it said that there was no money in recycled materials. I don't even use the trash company's service anymore. They were charging me $12/quarter to pick up recycled stuff and probably take it to the same landfill as our trash.

The biggest recycling effort in history was the metals program in the US during WWII.

That may have been important.

To further this conversation, products are structured to fail. Single use plastic = garbage.

Standardized reusable containers (remember glass milk bottles?) are structured for easy recycle.

We don't seem to accept this value as a culture. We don't feel the pain. Not sure why?

Ever since folhs warned us that global warming will end the world in ten years...I just have not bothered. Apparently everything not under boiling water will melt anyways. Just when I thought we had dodged a bullet, avoiding the impending global ice age they told us about in the ‘70s...and the population “bomb” from the ‘80s.

Agree^^^. It all goes in the one big trash container to the curb each week.

Nothing should go to a landfill. Long Beach has a gas assisted furnace that burns super hot and they filter the off gasses to 99.X. The energy is used to fire a steam generator which produces electricity. LB then sells the energy to the grid. What's great about this is that they can control the output to meet peak demand.

Yeah, we still have the recycle bins but only because of federal mandate. When recycling first became a mandate, LB issued these little bins the size of a large storage box. We got away with that for 2-3 years when the feds audited and said more was needed by volume. I think it was 50% excluding green waste.

We don't have green waste bins like many cities around us as that stuff burns well. The furnace has been online for 25 years and is just now getting an upgrade along with refurbishment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fintstone (Post 10533562)

At least straw men are recyclable.

In Germany if you want to buy plastic/glass bottles you have to put a deposit on it.
What they do with them after that. Don't really care. But it forces people to be cautious of the situation. That and you have to pay per grocery bag.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AZ_porschekid (Post 10533703)

In Germany if you want to buy plastic/glass bottles you have to put a deposit on it.
What they do with them after that. Don't really care.

They have incineration/energy recovery plants like those described by Zeke in Long Beach. Germany imports burnable trash from England.
I think energy recovery is the way to go. It seems to me that to be efficient trash would still have to be separated. It takes energy to dry wet stuff off enough to burn, which decreases the efficiency of the incinerator.
Water soaked trash should be buried. They say it should be composted, but that's going to have to improve a LOT to work. I've seen this stuff. I wouldn't put it on my garden.

metal recycling, good. Paper, good. cardboard, good.

Plastic recycling … BS scam designed to generate $$$$ and make fools feel good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 10427613)

Most of the plastic in the recycle bin ends up exactly the same place as regular trash.
It isn't cost-efficient to recycle most plastic. There are not enough places who are interested in recycling plastic so the supply greatly overwhelms the demand.
So it just gets thrown in the landfill, after the gubmint takes their percentage of the $$$$$$.

And that's really what it's all about. Another tax thinly veiled, just enough to fool the fools.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 10143099)

If we really want to dissect this issue, about half of all recyclables generated in the US are basically, worthless.

But Sammy, that can't be true.
The gubmint gave me (back) some money when I recycled it!

Aluminium and other metals to a lesser extent are valuable and are economical to recycle. it makes sense.
Paper.. .eh. Pretty much a wash, sort of worth it. Sometimes.
Plastic? Not hardly. Rubber? no friggin way. It costs more to recycle than to make new and the quality of the recycled product is marginal at best. it's a struggle, makes more sense to throw away.

See, the politicians who were kissing up to the tree huggers (no o'fence) created the mess by LYING to people. That's something that comes natural to many of them.
they PRETENDED that deposits and rewards for plastic and many other "recyclables" would be a good thing. Save the planet, RIGHT? bah.

A lie is a lie, even if it makes you feel good.
People buy plastic bottles by the truckload, but its OK because they can be RECYCLED!
The liberal tree huggers created all these recycle programs and convinced the impressionable people that they were GOOD.

But what they really are is revenue generators. A tax where the gubmint takes money from us and gives back part of it and keeps the rest.

Not same same.

But that's OK 'cause were SAVING THE PLANET.

The recycle programs add to the problem, while lining the gubmint pockets.
Then instead of letting the duffasses find out they've been swindled, the gubmint works out a sweetheart deal with the Chinese gubmint to take the recyclables.

If we used our ka-noggins and embraced reality instead of fantasy, we would have never allowed such fallacy and this sitch wouldn't be quite as bad.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and recycled plastic.

But we'll be OK when they outlaw straws.

Quote:

LOL, with all this I told ya so I feel almost as smart as TABS....
j/k
I could never be that smart ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Recycling
by Etta Sanders

8 April 02

Like many New Yorkers on the Upper West Side, Francie Williamson hates recycling, and loves it at the same time. A nurse who works a long day, she hates coming home to the chore of rinsing out the bottles and cans, and hates having them clutter up her apartment. But she likes the feeling that she has been part of a solution to the city's garbage problem that was long seen as a common-sense alternative to leaching landfills or polluting incinerators. So she fills her blue recycling bags with bottles and cans, and is herself thus filled with hope for the environment.

But the hopes of New York's recyclers were shaken when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently proposed suspending the recycling of metal, glass and plastic for 18 months. The program is expensive and inefficient, the mayor said, and much of what is in the blue bags does not in fact get recycled, ending up instead in landfills along with the rest of the garbage.

"We are not doing a good job," the mayor said, "and until we can it's just not worth it."

Others disagree, and in any case doubt that the mayor will be able to suspend what, after all, both state and local law require. The head of the New York City Council's new Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste, Michael McMahon, says he is not about to let recycling end. "Is it as important as education and public safety? No," McMahon said. "But it is almost as important. And the city has to be committed to implementing a good plan." (See McMahon's essay on Searchlight). This week, McMahon said, the city council will be making an announcement about an alternative proposal to Bloomberg's -- it will essentially be asking the state to take over the recycling program.

But thirteen years after the city council passed the first mandatory recycling law aimed at reducing New York's trash, many officials are focusing on other ways - such as incinerators (see story) -- to replace Fresh Kills, the city's primary garbage dump until it was closed last year after half a century in operation. In a city that generates 11, 000 tons of household garbage a day -- 22 million pounds! --recycling may have seemed like a good solution, but few think it is going to be an easy one.

THE COST OF RECYCLING
There are some people, most noticeably New York Times columnist John Tierney, who think recycling makes people feel virtuous, but accomplishes little, and at great cost. Half a billion dollars could have been saved, he wrote in his most recent of many columns on the subject, if a decade's worth of recyclables had been sent instead to out-of-state landfills. From the Department of Sanitation:

But the mayor himself was careful not to be so completely dismissive.

"We have two recycling programs, one that works and one that does not," Bloomberg said in his February 13th budget address.

The one that he says works is recycling of paper -- some 1,300 tons of it a day -- which pays for itself. The one that does not, the administration contends, is the 1,000 tons per day of metal, glass and plastic, which does not pay for itself.

Advocates say that such an assessment is unfair. They point out that paper recycling took time to turn a profit. It has taken a decade for the city to get to the point where 20 percent of all garbage collected from residences in the city is recycled. Only since April 2000 has curbside pick-up of recyclable material been a regular weekly occurrence in every neighborhood. Recycling, they say, has barely been given a chance. "This program has been a success," said Mark Izeman of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There are more than 2,000 tons of material a day that don't have to be landfilled. And it holds the potential for further savings."

But with a projected $4.8 billion deficit looming in the city budget, "potential" savings may not be good enough. And indeed, while the cost of recycling has actually been slightly lower than the cost of trucking the material to out-of-state landfills, that will soon no longer be the case. The price that companies charge to process the city's metal, glass and plastic will soon increase to more than $100 a ton, nearly double what it is now. Add the cost of collecting it all, and the cost of recycling jumps to $239 a ton. By contrast, the cost of disposing of a ton of garbage, without recycling it, is $132. That is why the mayor projects that a halt in recycling will save the city $56 million next year.

CAN RECYCLING BE MADE COST-EFFECTIVE?

It admittedly faces a sharp challenge in the marketplace, where the value of most metals, most glass and many plastics is low. "The markets are not real strong for these commodities," said Allan Gerlat, editor of Waste News, a biweekly newspaper. "It's a nationwide thing. There's just more supply than demand."

But New York City could boost those markets by using its clout as a consumer to buy more products made from recycled materials. The city does buy some plastic bags, carpeting and garbage cans with recycled content, but other items, such as snow cones, park benches, playground equipment made from recycled materials, are often more expensive than those made from virgin materials.

Though the city has spent millions of dollars on public education campaigns about recycling, the word has not reached many New Yorkers, who still do not know what they should sort into the blue bags. "Despite the best intentions of residents, they put in plastic toys, plastic wrap, yogurt containers," said Steven Lawitts, the deputy commissioner for administration at the Department of Sanitation. "Many of these things have recycling symbols on them, but they're not in fact economically recyclable and they're not part of our program." That is one of the reasons why as much as 40 percent of what is put out in the blue bags is not actually recycled.

WHAT NOW?

New York City is not the only municipality that is struggling to make recycling work. The upstate city of Amsterdam (pop. 18,000), faced with rising costs and a belief that their recyclables were being dumped, stopped recycling at the end of 1999. Six months later they were sued by the State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, and forced to resume. Amsterdam is not anti-recycling, says Mayor John Duchessi, but they feel they are subjected to a burdensome state requirement that comes with no financial assistance.

The Attorney General has been meeting with New York City Sanitation Department officials, but has made no statement regarding what he would do if the city stops recycling. "Attorney General Spitzer recognizes Mayor Bloomberg and the city are facing tremendous fiscal challenges," says Mark Violette, a spokesman for Spitzer, "We're trying to balance the monetary needs with our conviction to continue recycling."

Meanwhile, the city officials are looking for ways to finance the operation. The mayor has suggested using the deposit money from returned cans and bottles. Others have recommended increasing the deposit to ten cents, with five cents going to the city and five cents being returned to the customer. The city council, according to McMahon, this week will ask the state to set up an independent recycling authority which will handle all city recycling -- paper, glass, metal and plastic. That authority would also act to try to develop markets and improve public education. To pay for the authority, McMahon said, the council will ask the state to amend the bottle law to redirect unclaimed deposit nickels from the distributors to this authority and also expand the deposit to more bottles. The original state bottle law, passed in the early 1980s before the boom in bottled water and iced tea, covers only sodas and wine coolers.

Although Mayor Bloomberg says he is committed to recycling, the program could be in jeopardy if he is successful in suspending it and then ties its resuscitation to a quick economic recovery or a change in the bottle deposit law.

John Tierney, in his New York Times Magazine article "Recycling is Garbage", wrote that paper is produced from trees farmed for that purpose and therefore does not cause the destruction of forests.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 7415179)

Recycling aluminium makes good sense from both an environmental and economic standpoint, but recycling plastic bottles is a total joke/scam just to make the enviro-wackos happy.

it is not cost effective, it is not environmentally friendly, it costs the consumers stupid money, and the bottles end up in the landfill anyway in most cases because it isn't cost effective to recycle it.
In some cases the gubmint has to PAY manufacturers to re-use plastic bottles in things like fleece jackets or bedliners or such, because using virgin petroleum based materials is cheaper and produces a higher quality product.

note to the rest of the world, you can't take a plastic water bottle and recycle it to make another plastic water bottle.
Doan work that way.
You can only recycle most types of plastic into crap types of plastic, like bed liners.

And who the fook is dumb enough to buy plastic water bottles anywho?
No one in my house.
We are dead-set agin paying a dollar for .00001 cents worth of freaking water.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeke (Post 10533632)

That place stull exists?
Guess I lost that bet.

I worked there back in the 80's and recognized it was a BS scam immediately.
A place to turn federal tax money into local revenue. Not cost effective, did more damage to the environment than good.

It was also very poorly engineered and designed.
Example:
Al big furnaces have forced draft (FD) and induced draft (ID) fans to blow the air through the furnace.

The motor on one if their ID fans had failed and they called my company to replace the motor despite the fact that we were very expensive and specialized in stuff that was too difficult for typical plant forces.

The reason they called us: The ID fan sat in the middle of a maze of large duct work.
Ducting that was around 8 to 10 feet tall, and the motor was probably around 3000 pounds or so. it was a long time ago, caint remember the 'zact details but it were heavy and inaccessible.

A crane large enough to reach it and pick it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars and take a few weeks to get shipped and built on-site.

So we built a combination of a small gauge rail system with an adjustable pedestal car that we could slide the motor onto, and roll it around the track with the use of tuggers to a location that was close enough to the road where a large (but not giant) crane could pick it and load it on a semi trailer.
re-installation was a the same steps reversed.

One thing I clearly remember was how gross the place was. Thee bolts that held the motor to the base were covered with maggots and had to be brushed off before putting a wrench on them.
And there were a few places where there were puddles of maggots on the ground and they were slippery when stepped on.
You can imagine the smell, don't have to go there.

But the money was really good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 10533748)

LOL, with all this I told ya so I feel almost as smart as TABS....
j/k
I could never be that smart ;)

I just liquidated everything....and invested in PLASTICS :(

Next time...I'm listening to Tabz....$kybrella$...yep!

I just took 4 bags of recyclables to my local center last night, it actually stressed me out that two of the bags were beer cans that I could make a few bucks on, but the price of scrap aluminum lately is about .25 a pound, so those two bags would have brought next to nothing.

At work, we separate the cardboard from the normal trash in big dumpsters out back. The same truck picks up both dumpsters at the same time, so why bother ?

If I lived on a farm I'd save all the non-deposit AL cans. Steel stock too.
Melt them into ingots and set aside for later.

There have been some earth-berm homes built with glass bottles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by john70t (Post 10533891)

If I lived on a farm I'd save all the non-deposit AL cans. Steel stock too.
Melt them into ingots and set aside for later.

There have been some earth-berm homes built with glass bottles.

LOL melt em down with what?
The cost to heat up a blast furnace would far exceed the value of the end result.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 10533951)

LOL melt em down with what?
The cost to heat up a blast furnace would far exceed the value of the end result.

But the cool factor should offset the cost of heating the blast furnace. I mean, imagine the neighbor envy when you tell them "I have a blast furnace. You have any metal I can melt down?"

Heat the shop with the blast furnace, and use the ingots to pay the bill when the scrap price goes up in the dead of Winter...come out even. That's a Win-Win in my book.

Quote:

Originally Posted by widebody911 (Post 10533645)

At least straw men are recyclable.

lol

Only thing they take for recycling here is #1 and #2 plastic, glass, metal cans. I seem to remember styrofoam, if clean, is valuable to recycle. Not sure if that is true.

All the beer cans and water bottles have an extra tax, I mean deposit, to encourage recycling. 2 quart plastic containers you get juice in are too. Every few months I turn those in for cash.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 10533763)

Did some checking, they were planning to shut down that plant last year but Long beach spent $14 million in upgrades to keep it alive until 2024.

for reference, a couple of pics of similarly sized ID fans:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1563909713.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1563909713.jpg

what do they do in Germany?

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 10533951)

LOL melt em down with what?
The cost to heat up a blast furnace would far exceed the value of the end result.

Dude, you are so on.

The reason Tokyo was firebombed was that there were a thousand manufacturing shops spread out in tiny wooden buildings.
One guy makes wing material. One guy makes tarps.

Anyone can make a small wood-fired kiln using basic materials such as bricks and clay.
Anyone can chop up (non fire-hazardous cough) metal material in any amount for later use, or just as an art piece.

These goods are commodities and like any commodity they have value - and that value goes up and down.

Steel, aluminum or any metal is the choice commodity - Living in Chicago, there are the "scrappers" that go into neighborhoods looking for metal. Even the homeless will walk with shopping carts picking for metal out of garbage cans. Then there are the dumpster divers and I have seen all kninds: men, woman and children. Electrical stuff (copper) has value as well.

Then there is the other stuff: food waste, yard waste, plastic, wood/paper - that value is less and the demand has shrunk.

My company has many rubber injection machines - I geneate a fair amount of rubber scrap. I was selling it until Novemeber of last year. I now had to pay for recycling - which I did because it was even with the cost of landfilling it. In March of this year, no one was taking it - it is now landfilled.

It isn't easy, but the best option is to reduce the output of scrap. Raw materials cost money. When my compnay estabishes a cost for products made out of metal, the scrap dollars are calculated and the production cost is reduced by the value of the scrap. This especially true in high alloy, speciality metals,

Personally, I'm trying to reduce plastic waste - I really loath plastic bags.

make slag

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Quote:

Originally Posted by RWebb (Post 10534352)

what do they do in Germany?

I'm guessing something based on long term benefits and not today's easiest buck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcommin (Post 10534721)

I generate a fair amount of rubber scrap. .

Now you're just bragging.

I live in rural area and recycle is not an option with our waste collection system. Get visitors from the city all the time (Liberals)......Always poking around looking for my recycle bin. When I tell them it doesn't exist, they don't believe me and put it in different bags for me to sort out...

I humor them and throw all but the metal in the wood stove when they leave.....

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 10533951)

LOL melt em down with what?
The cost to heat up a blast furnace would far exceed the value of the end result.

Steel melts easy, probably just a backyard bonfire or maybe a small hibachi with some Kingsford.

[QUOTE=LakeCleElum;10535647]I live in rural area and recycle is not an option with our waste collection system. Get visitors from the city all the time (Liberals)..

Isn't it interesting that liberals want to conserve and conservatives want to waste?