
In New York, Making Ends Meet on a 5-Cent Recycling Deposit - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/nyregion/collecting-cans-collectors-nyc.html
======
gbronner
An undocumented but well known side effect of the combination of curbside
recycling and bottle deposits is that once the cans and bottles are placed
outdoors, homeless people cut the bags open to fish out the deposit
containers.

This makes a tremendous mess, and the city recycling trucks often won't pick
up the the bags once they have been shredded, and it creates litter up and
down the street -- it probably costs 5x as much to clean up after the homeless
as they get off of the bottle deposits, and this is after they've already
performed the labor of separating the solid waste stream.

~~~
myself248
For this to happen, a couple things have to be in place:

1: Ordinary people have to find the deposit so small as to not be worthwhile,
so they chuck the cans in with their normal recycling rather than returning
them to claim the deposit.

2: The recycling has to go out in bags rather than bins or carts.

I'm in Michigan and even our 10¢ deposit, which was impressive in the 1970s,
has ceased to be worthwhile for many people. We should've upped it to 25¢ a
decade ago, and expanded it to include juice and other noncarbonated things,
but I digress!

However, my city uses a big rolling bin for recycling, so there's no bag to
slice open. If someone wanted to root through the bin, they could do so
without making a mess.

(And if they decided to dump the bin on the street, after once occurrence I'd
be sitting on the porch on trash night with a blunderbuss full o' rock-
salt...)

~~~
altec3
I'm in Oregon and our deposit is 10¢ as well, we also have the big bins/carts.
The homeless around here will pull everything out of our recycling bin a lot
of the time to find cans. Most of the time they'll put it all back, but
sometimes they wont, and I'll find my trash/recycling littered about the
street.

It also has the effect that almost everyone in my area leaves their trash cans
on the street, because if you put them somewhere near your house the homeless
people will find it, and invite themselves up onto your property.

------
thereisnospork
The 5 cent (or more) recycling deposit has always made sense to me as
essentially a littering/co-mingling tax. Pay a little at purchase which funds
the collection and proper disposal/recycling.

~~~
mdasen
The article notes that the 5-cent deposit is hampering recycling rather than
helping it.

The Natural Resources Defense Council noted that expanding the bottle deposit
would "punch a hole in the economic model of curbside recycling." That's
because recyclers "want the good stuff, we want the metal and the good
plastics."

Whether a can is recycled by curbside pickup or by bringing it to a redemption
center probably doesn't really matter environmentally. Curbside might have an
advantage if they can more efficiently collect them (using less fuel and
such). In this case, removing valuable recyclables like metal and good
plastics from the curbside stream means making curbside recycling less
valuable overall. It's transferring money from the city to the individuals
collecting the cans.

I'm definitely not faulting the people collecting the cans. They're trying to
make ends meet in a city that can be tough. However, for the environment, the
bottle deposit doesn't seem to be a tax that helps out recycling - it's a tax
that hurts recycling.

If the state expands the bottle deposit to include more bottles, it will
remove more high-value recyclables from the curbside recycling stream. Those
high-value recyclables subsidize the recycling of less valuable recyclables.
That means that we lose the funding for a lot of our recycling.

It's ultimately a poor use of human time to just be moving things around.
Rather than entering the curbside stream and getting recycled, people do a lot
of more labor so that they...get recycled. The end result is the same, but
there's more human labor used, more fuel used, more costs paid, etc. And it
makes curbside recycling of other items less economical.

~~~
namdnay
What do you mean by recycling? Melting down the bottles to make “new” glass?
That’s extremely energy intensive, compared to just cleaning and refilling,
which is what is done to deposit bottles (at least here in Germany)

~~~
BoorishBears
That's not what's done when you deposit bottles in most automated "reverse-
vending" machines in the US, it gets crushed/shredded then recycled off-site

That being said, this article shows the German version of that, and it looks
identical:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/30/has-germany-
hi...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/30/has-germany-hit-the-
jackpot-of-recycling-the-jurys-still-out)

The action described also seems identical the the US version:

>Almost all German supermarkets have sophisticated “reverse vending machines”
that will weigh and scan your bottle to match against a list of acceptable
shapes and sizes.

>If your bottle is not on the retailer’s list, the machine spits the container
back at you. If it matches, the bottle goes down a chute for either recycling
or shredding, and the machine hands you a voucher with the added-up Pfand that
you can then cash in at the till.

~~~
ylk
Well your second quote states that bottles are _either_ recycled _or_ not.

There are reusable and disposable plastic bottles. The disposable ones are of
really thin plastic and crushed, yes. The reusable ones are put into crates
and return to the factories so that they can be cleaned and refilled. You can
actually look through the machine and see the stacks of crates in the room
behind them.

Many glas bottles (e.g. for beer, water and more) are reusable, too. They’re
treated like reusable plastic bottles. Disposable glas does not have a deposit
on it. You take those to a bottle bank (? containers on the street you throw
them into), which is emptied once every two weeks (not too sure on the
frequency).

Cans are the only type that is always crushed on return, afaik.

~~~
BoorishBears
The article is stating the obvious, if you make it optional, manufacturers
will try to get out of it. It looks like it's completely backfired...

~~~
ylk
I’m baffled as to what makes you think that. Here’s a list of drinks and
packages affected by the compulsory deposit: [https://dpg-
pfandsystem.de/index.php/en/compulsory-deposit-f...](https://dpg-
pfandsystem.de/index.php/en/compulsory-deposit-for-one-way-drinks-
packaging/affected-drinks-and-beverages.html)

Here, have a random statistic - they talk about the decrease in percentage of
beverages offered in reusable packaging:
[https://de.statista.com/infografik/amp/8077/anteil-von-
einwe...](https://de.statista.com/infografik/amp/8077/anteil-von-einweg-und-
mehrweg-an-den-getraenkeverpackungen-in-deutschland/) It’s apparently “only”
42% for reusables, compared to 56% for disposable ones. It’s not perfect, but
It’s better than what pretty much everybody else in the world is doing.

Edit: turns out the statistica link is not so random - it’s based on data
published by the federal environmental agency. More (in German) here:
[https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/verbrauch-
von-g...](https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/verbrauch-von-
getraenken-in-mehrweg-oekologisch-0)

~~~
BoorishBears
If you're baffled you didn't read the article

------
snissn
I think this is important. I also don't think having 5 cent recycling deposits
make sense anymore where recycling is mandatory in nyc, there's no reason for
a financial incentive. There's got to be a better way to create demand for
labor for the people resorting to this, also to just provide services to them
with tax money, as opposed to this industry that's created around taking
already sorted recyclables and re-appropriating them. The whole thing seems
really inhumane and it's funded by the existence of the deposit tax.

~~~
supernova87a
Well, I hate to break it to you, but your desire not to see human desperation
and to remove the things that make it apparent, does not make it go away.

People do these jobs because there's a market for the items in question, and
because they're poor. Taking away a deposit (which helps lubricate the return
process of useful materials and gives people a reason to value them) for your
conscience sake will not make the poverty go away.

Clearly people do throw away cans and bottles when it's not convenient, and
these people who clearly don't have better opportunities in front of them, get
some minimal (though unfortunate) employment which they choose to do.

Go work to eliminate poverty. Not the outward indicators of it.

~~~
bobthepanda
Also, in terms of things that they could be doing, sorting trash is like one
of the least bad things they could be doing.

Eliminate that and people would probably switch to something more unsavory and
harmful to society.

------
fennecfoxen
There are two major policy failures on display here. The first is that there
isn't enough housing in the city, and they're basically never going to build
it. The second is that the city needs to get better waste management
technology, instead of just leaving trash out on the streets to feed the rats.

~~~
JshWright
Not sure if your "feed the rats" comment was intended to be cruel, or just
careless...

~~~
dantillberg
They likely are referring to feeding actual literal rats. Rats get into trash
left out by the street for pickup.

~~~
bobthepanda
In fact, NYC stopped expansion of a composting program because rats were
getting into the compost bins in buildings. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2018/oct/07/ick-rats-roa...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2018/oct/07/ick-rats-roaches-rank-smells-dampen-nyc-composting-program)

------
forgotmypw
Fun fact: Poland Spring bottles can be returned for a 5-cent deposit, unless
they have a thin red line on the label, in which case they are worthless to
deposit collectors, and just end up in the trash. (The red line is an
indicator that the bottle came from a 24-pack.)

------
deith
Why don't they take a mail truck on Mother's day, fill it with bottles and
bring it to Michigan? I heard it's 10 cents there.

~~~
tsjq
There was a recent podcast episode on a related event :

"Episode 925: A Mob Boss, A Garbage Boat and Why We Recycle : Planet Money :
NPR"

[https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-b...](https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-
boss-a-garbage-boat-and-why-we-recycle)

------
fortran77
I have a great deal of sympathy for these people and it's a shame that the way
zoning works it's difficult for there to be enough cheap housing built where
people need it.

However, I have some questions for the NY Times:

1\. What does the fact that there are people paying $13,000/month rent have
anything to do with the people collecting cans?

2\. They're stealing from the City, as you point out. Why isn't this wrong?

3\. How much tax-free money are they earning? Combined with the benefits
they're receiving from Federal Government, City, and State with this untaxed
revenue stream, what's their income? How much would a person who pays taxes
have to earn to net the same amount?

~~~
ipnon
The article quotes the commissioner of the sanitation department saying that
collecting cans is decriminalized.

~~~
fortran77
There's a difference between "decriminalized" and "legal". Certainly we
shouldn't fill jail cells with recycling thieves, but we shouldn't deify them
either.

And their income tax theft isn't legal or decriminalized.

------
mrcactu5
Everybody drinks soda misses the garbage can, so these people are making the
bottle and can recycling market more efficient.

------
benatkin
The recycling deposit isn't a bounty. It's intended for the person using the
goods. If they choose to forgo it by putting it in a bin, it shouldn't go to
some random person digging in the bin, but should go to the waste department,
which is expensive enough without people exploiting this incentive.

~~~
mc32
In San Francisco we have these old ladies who rummage though people's bins
looking for redeemable containers. Most are "conscientious" enough to put the
rest of the recyclables back in without leaving a mess on the sidewalk, but
some are less caring and you wake up having to put things back in the bin. On
the other hand I believe rubbish companies consider the practice theft and so
they campaign against the practice.

~~~
zer00eyz
I grew up in Connecticut where we always had redemption value on cans/bottles
and so on. The rule was if you sold it you had to take it back. Taking back
the cans and bottles was normal for me as a kid, it was how I got change for
the vending machines in front of the store.

In CA (in the Bay Area) I am charged redemption value on cans and bottles. I
put them in recycling, and guess what, the same truck that picks up my garbage
also picks up my recycling... it is all going in the trash.

Recycling is broken, and we need to make more changes to make it effective.

~~~
nrp
In the Bay Area, you're probably being served by Recology. They have trucks
with multiple compartments for recycling, composting, and trash, but they also
have pretty advanced sorting capabilities at their sites:
[https://www.recology.com/environment-innovation/#resource-
re...](https://www.recology.com/environment-innovation/#resource-recovery)

I don't doubt that recycling needs to be improved in most places, but the San
Francisco Bay Area system is among the better ones.

~~~
zer00eyz
Ummm...

In two counties, the same single compartment truck is picking up both cans
(trash+recycling) at the same stop. No amount of sorting is going to help fix
that mess.

~~~
nrp
You’d be surprised. In the last city I lived in in Orange County, the waste
system was deliberately designed to have a single residential container and
full sorting done at the waste facility by a combination of people and
machines. The claim was that it was actually more effective than curbside
sorting because the professionals and automation knew how to process
recyclables better than the average resident. I don’t know if that is what
Recology does in single-truck locations, but it seems likely.

