Recycling in your locale

[Garak]

Originally Posted by Donald
The companies that pick up recycling also own landfills and they make more money dumping the stuff into their landfills than recycling it.

Sometimes that happens when they don't even own the landfills. Sometimes there's just no money to be made and/or no recycling facilities in reasonable proximity for one or more items set aside as recyclable. We were (and possibly still are) having that problem with glass, except for beer bottles, which is a separate recycling stream and has been as long as I can remember.

 

[tom slick]

I have some direct experience in the recycling industry.
China's policy is called National Sword. Here is some info
https://resource-recycling.com/plas...crackdown-illegal-scrap-plastic-imports/

My local MRF does not recommend bagging recyclables because for their machinery to process it the bag has to be ripped open and emptied. That creates two problems. One is there isn't enough time to open the bag on the initial sorting so it gets pulled out for later. If they don't have time later it gets landfilled because there isn't enough value in the bag to worry about. The second problem is a loose bag, and any other stringy materials, wrap around anything that rotates in the machinery. They stop the machinery 3 times a day to clean out built up stringy materials.

Glass and metals are easily recycled in the US but there aren't a lot of plastics reprocessing here. It is extremely low value so it's difficult to make money and it's properties change every time it is reprocessed.

 

[Alfred_B]

Why was China buying it? You would think that they would charge money, not pay.

 

[Rmay635703]

Originally Posted by Alfred_B
Why was China buying it? You would think that they would charge money, not pay.


China has limited natural resources and all recyclables have a monetary value even though nobody pays you for them.

That really nasty "cardboard" you get from China in packaging is end of life recycled cardboard, it's the stuff that can not be recycled again

My guess is China's labor rates are growing too much to mess with recyclables

However Egypt would gladly sort and clean out junk, sadly they have nothing we want so no reason to ship there

 

[tom slick]

Originally Posted by Alfred_B
Why was China buying it? You would think that they would charge money, not pay.

Because they want the materials. Their ships come here with containers of finished goods and materials, return with containers of recycle.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted by Alfred_B
Why was China buying it? You would think that they would charge money, not pay.


Cheap labor (people who aren't good enough to work in factories, they work recycles)
Demand for even the lowest quality plastic (recycled into disposable plastic in their standard, cheap enough that even those with $700 USD a year peasants can afford)
(formerly) low environmental regulation
Demand for higher quality plastic (for their manufacturing for export industry)
Reduce import of petroleum product ($$$)

However they are getting expensive as cheap labor isn't as cheap anymore (more than Vietnam and Africa for sure), and they now already have enough plastic to deal with.

I think a lot of changes in the future of the industry will come from bio-degradable plastics, or disposible from recycled plastic (i.e. bottle box, Eco-tainer lid made from recycled plastic), and in the long run making them into liquid or gas fuel for power generation like landfill gas.