[wdfifteen]

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.