[jcommin]

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.