
As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling - mykowebhn
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/business/local-recycling-costs.html
======
nostrademons
It makes me wonder if we were ever really recycling, or if "recycling" was a
marketing buzzword for "cheaply dumping your trash in China".

I seem to remember a lot of controversy over recycling in the 80s and early
90s, with my local town government insisting it was too expensive. Suddenly
everything changed in the late 90s, right around the time that globalization
took off, and recycle bins took off everywhere. By the late 2000s everything
was moving to "single stream recycling", where you just throw all your trash,
cardboard, plastic, etc. in one bin and somehow it'd magically get sorted at
the facility. That frankly seemed a little too good to be true to me, but
everybody was buying into it.

Suddenly Plastic China comes out, China stops accepting recyclables, and we're
back to where we were in the early 90s. What if all the "progress" was just an
illusion where companies figured they could brand trash-hauling as recycling
for eco-friendly customers, charge more for it, and then dump the trash on an
unregulated Chinese buyer who could do whatever they want with it?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I assure you that anything metal gets recycled. It's much cheaper to recycle
than dig more ore out of the ground.

 _tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket_

~~~
masonic

      tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket
    

No core charge or other incentive from the parts store?

~~~
djaychela
Not on brake rotors, no[1]. They are always from new - there's nothing to
recondition on them, they're only suitable for melting down again. I'd think
they would be prohibitively expensive to handle for the retail chain, given
their low scrap value.

[1] Aside from top-end stuff that has a separate bell and rotor, but this is
maybe 0.001%, if that.

------
andrewstuart
The packaging industry is going to fight tooth and nail so it can continue to
spew out single use plastics for every single sales transaction that occurs.

There's big money involved.

Imagine the costs to the packaging industry if it was no longer allowed to
create infinite garbage.

I do find it strange that there seems to be zero noticeable social pressure on
bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic bottles.

~~~
SamReidHughes
It would create infinite other forms of garbage that people throw in the trash
anyway.

~~~
crooked-v
Single-used cardboard wrappings for non-perishables don't have nearly as much
impact on the environment as plastic, even if just thrown away.

~~~
bunderbunder
It really depends on whether you value apples or oranges more highly.

My understanding is that paper fares better on the litter front, since even
the stuff that escapes landfills still degrades quickly, while plastic tends
to fare better on the carbon footprint front, because it's lighter (which
reduces fuel burned to ship things) and less energy-intensive to manufacture.

------
wyattpeak
People keep saying that China was _accepting_ recyclables. They weren't
_accepting_ them, they were _buying_ them.

It's hard to make a case that it was all just trash when somebody was paying
for it.

~~~
mdorazio
It wasn't all trash, but a significant portion was. Without expensive sorting
machinery, recycling is generally only profitable with extremely cheap labor
and a disregard for environmental damage caused by tossing the unprofitable
stuff in the nearest dump. What was profitable for 1990s China would not have
been profitable for the US.

~~~
mikewilliams
Recycling will never be profitable, but we can't just keep burying trash and
forgetting about it, or maybe we can, I don't know.

~~~
49para
Or perhaps we could just stop creating it in the first place. Is there really
a need for all of the one use plastics or the excessive packaging ?

~~~
deepGem
My city Bangalore effectively enforced a plastic ban. So some grocery stores
now only have paper bags even to pack veggies. I think it's doable. The
government enforced the ban as there was no alternative, we don't have enough
space for landfills.

A city like Singapore however uses a lot of plastic and thermocol. I wonder
where they find space for their landfills. Probably they are doing the same,
exporting all the trash to China or Indonesia.

~~~
xvilka
China still accepts rare-earth/metal trash, but also properly sorted trash
too. For example, recently mainland declined to accept Hong Kong trash until
they implement sorting. On these conditions, they can continue sending their
garbage to the mainland China.

------
opportune
Not sure about burning recyclables, but burning trash in general is more
environmentally friendly than it seems. Sure it releases CO2 (which isn't
really an issue if that energy would otherwise come from fossil fuels) but
it's possible to scrub out most other contaminants, and it prevents the
burnable materials from languishing in a landfill producing methane. It's not
recycling, but it is reusing.

I'm kind of skeptical about the benefits of recycling certain materials that
are so cheap that the operational costs of recycling are much greater than the
value saved. This seems to be happening in the article where people are
increasingly subsidizing unprofitable recycling programs. As far as I know,
it's not an environmental disaster to just dump aluminum, glass, and plastic
in a landfill, and it seems cheaper to just produce more of those products
from their original materials than to recycle the used materials. Maybe we
should take a step back and ask ourselves whether it's worth our time to
recycle certain materials.

~~~
mymythisisthis
High temperature burning is a bit better environmentally than people just
burning garbage at home. The extremely high temp is the key.

There is a demand for aluminum and metal, many people make a bit of a living
collecting these for money.

The problem with glass is that it has food residue on it. This causes leaching
in the landfills.

Farmers need COMPOST! Soil around the world is nearly depleted. We need an
efficient way of cleaning out the food particles from food containers, before
disposing or recycle, and having those particles end up on farms.

~~~
seanalltogether
When I first moved to the UK I was frustrated about the fact that I had to
separate my food waste from my general garbage, or my glass from my general
recycling. I can see now why it's a better system because the potential to
reuse these materials is higher when they are separated at the source.

Not to mention the fact that cities have landfill/recycling centers you can
drive to and get rid of anything and everything for free.

------
rdtsc
> In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the
> terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a
> landfill.

I heard other cities doing that. It is interesting in municipalities where
people diligently separate their recycling into multiple streams, everything
neatly going into a separate bins and so on, and then it all goes and gets
dumped in the landfill.

That says something about human psychology. People need to engage in this
ritual because it makes them feel better. They might say to themselves "I am
separating my glass, from metal, from plastic, I am saving the environment! I
feel good about myself". The economy doesn't work out in the end, but nobody
dares to tell the people that, so they happily continue to sort their trash.
It's kind of a dystopian win-win situation.

~~~
SiempreViernes
Well no, the environment gets ruined so it's more of a "everyone suffers and
die ahead of time" situation

~~~
rdtsc
That's why I called it a "a dystopian win-win" :-)

~~~
selimthegrim
Recyclables, Please! Steam greenlight that stat. I’d buy it. Maybe the plot
twist is you’re homeless all along!

~~~
BrandonMarc
Or the recyclables are made out of people.

------
jillesvangurp
The problem is not waste but the fact that is not a problem for consumers or
manufacturers. A lot of product packaging only makes sense because you don't
have to worry about disposing in a responsible way. Milk used to come in glass
bottles, which the milkman would take back for reuse. Not anymore. There's no
more milkman and the factory uses cheap to produce one time use packaging.
Disposal cost is not their problem.

The solution is twofold.

1) we can do better now at separating waste using AI and robotics. Instead of
having 3 or 4 bins at home where we toss things based on our mood, gut
feeling, or simply which bin is the least full; a robot could confidently be
sorting waste into hundreds of buckets. And unlike humans they'd get it mostly
right. Waste becomes a resource when you treat it properly. There are some
places where former land fill sites are being mined for precious materials.
This stuff is not worthless anymore.

2) Price for disposal needs to be part of the deal when selling a product.
E.g. disposal cost for e.g. washing machines is part of the sales price in
some countries. They take back the old one when you buy a new one. Already
payed for when you bought it. Also, super convenient to not have to do that
yourself.

~~~
ragebol
Something like [https://zenrobotics.com](https://zenrobotics.com)?

Sorting action in [https://youtu.be/X_1sOPqM_VA](https://youtu.be/X_1sOPqM_VA)

------
maxxxxx
In Germany you pay a deposit when you buy a bottle and when you bring it back,
you get your money back. At least when I lived there the system worked well.
there is always a lot of pressure from industry to go one-way though.

~~~
genocidicbunny
California has this as well -- CRV, but I dont see too many people taking
advantage of it. Part of the problem is that most stores dont accept the
bottles back -- you need to bring them to a recycling dropoff point that seem
to be relatively rare and far in between.

~~~
Semaphor
Here in Germany, almost every store takes almost every bottle.

~~~
maxxxxx
Is there a law or is it voluntary? I don't remember.

~~~
blattimwind
When you sell something with a deposit on it you have to accept returns of
stuff with deposit on it.

~~~
fkistner
Nit pick, things work differently for multi-way and one-way containers:

\- There are no special regulations for multi-way bottles (glass and plastic
alike). Most stores will accept only those they are incentivized to, i.e. the
brands they sell (manufacturers are eager to get them back to be able to reuse
them).

\- As soon as a store sells a kind of one-way container (plastic bottles,
aluminum cans), they have to accept, pay out the mandatory €0.25 deposit for,
and properly dispose of each and every one-way container of that kind
customers bring in (in household quantities). There is a clearing mechanism,
since store's sales might not match their returns.

~~~
majewsky
Re: one-way bottles, it was not always that easy. When the one-way deposit was
introduced in ~2004, shops were only required to take their own SKUs back.
This was absolutely horrible for consumers and producers alike, so retailers
introduced the shared system voluntarily.

~~~
fkistner
Good point. Fortunately, that seems to have been mandated by law since 2006
(at least for stores larger than 200m² ≅ 2150 sq ft).

------
chungleong
I often wonder how much of the plastic in the ocean actually came from
"recycled" plastic being shipped to another country for burning and/or burial.

------
adventured
This is a market opportunity to come up with less costly systems that can
operate at slim margins and with scale.

Recycling will never be the greatest of businesses. However the scale of
demand in a country as large as the US is extraordinary. 5% margins at $100
billion in sales is ultimately a giant, $60-$80 billion market cap business.
That's the kind of opportunity this presents for an enterprise that can
quickly move to be the solution to the post China recycling problem.

~~~
maxxxxx
I always think this is a great opportunity for AI and Robotics. Sorting
recycling automatically would be a huge improvement.

Edit: I know you are not supposed to ask about downvotes but I have no idea
why this got downvoted. This would finally be an application of AI that
benefits mankind instead of more surveillance for ads.

~~~
therealx
I didn't down vote you, but I do know that some robotics is used now. In
addition with different sized mesh screens to filter size. Then they use
float/sink and melting point to further separate.

------
irrational
Is there anyway to get transparency on what individual communities are
actually doing? At our last county fair, the recycling department had a game
set up to help people understand what should go into trash versus recycling. I
was asking the manager about the specifics and he said that the recycling was
taken to a local facility where local people were paid to sort through it on a
conveyor belt to pull out stuff that should've gone into the trash. It sounded
feasible at the time, but reading through these comments I wonder if the
recycling was actually being shipped to China (this was before the whole thing
about China refusing recyclables started). We are on the west coast by a large
port, so I would think it would easier for us to have been shipping recyclable
to China that people farther inland.

------
coldtea
Recycling was always a lipstick on a pig. Inefficient, subsidized, hypocrisy.

Wanna help the environment? Reduce consumption overall.

~~~
nraynaud
very specifically: don't take the plane, don't got to work with your car, and
live in high density housing.

~~~
thundergolfer
And have a vegan/vegetarian diet.

~~~
nostrademons
And don't have kids.

~~~
t1lthesky
I think this is a misguided sentiment, and this article sums up the reasons
why pretty well:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/want-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/want-
to-help-fight-climate-change-have-more-children?utm_campaign=socialflow-
organic&utm_content=view&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-
view&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter)

------
tpkj
There is a problem with the materials the packaging industry uses. Are there
any start-ups or big companies working on a solution?

------
dade_
I think that we should have started with municipal composting, paper recycle
and plastic Reduce programs. Most of the contamination is from food waste and
it makes up most of the weight of trash (obviously because of water content)
and I imagine is the major source of methane in our landfills.

Somehow we started with recycling plastics programs (perhaps industry
manipulation) which is a complicated mess. Where I live, they still can't
recycle black plastics so they end up in the landfill anyway. The these latest
developments, I am sure if we actually looked, we would find out that there
are provinces in China making a fortune importing recyclables that actually
just went straight to a landfill. Of course, now they have decades of trash to
contend with. Meanwhile we can all sit pretty thinking about how wonderful we
were for separating our recyclables.

~~~
mymythisisthis
I can't even find a way of properly recycling batteries. It would be nice if
all the fire halls allowed you to drop-off batteries, and old fire-alarms
(they contain radioactive material).

------
kingkawn
Someone I knew was trying to make a film a couple of years ago following the
recycling stream from his neighborhood in nyc to China. His takeaway was that
basically nothing is recycled.

------
foxhop
I have a family of 5 (three young children). We don't bother trying to recycle
paper or cardboard anymore. We compost it or use it in the garden as sheet
mulch.

Still our recycling bin fills faster than our "trash" due to packaging.

I also make eco bricks out of any plastic bags or plastic wrappers.

~~~
millstone
Please share more about your eco bricks, this is the first I've heard of them.
Is it as simple as filling a 2L plastic bottle with other plastics? Do you
donate them, what are they used for?

~~~
foxhop
I use Gatorade bottles. I'm currently using them between the studs in my shed
to act as insulation.

------
mxfh
Is there some life cycle assessment (LCA) writeup somewhere on the whole
plastics issue? From what it looks "recycling" was big lie due to no
accountablity? So all consumer facing regulation in societies with a working
waste disposal system is pretty much pointless, if the mess is on the systems
top end side.

In Germany, I now get everything in single use paper bags as the default, if I
don't intervene, which I see as worse environmental impact, the then few grams
of plastic bags we had before. As long as you have a closed system, with near
100% waste caputure, no plastic should end up in the wild when accountability
is enforced through all waste management transactions.

So I'm still not shure, how this whole garbage patch topic connects to
consumer policies in countries with working closed disposal systems, is this
just activism to distract from inability to control the systemic issues here?

------
siliconunit
The alternative to total recycling could be to rough recycling what can be
easily extracted and used (ie metals) and the rest could go through a cycle of
thermolysis/pyrolysis, powered by solar or other sustainable sources...

------
habosa
In school we were taught the 3 RS: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Nobody ever taught me that they were in order. Reducing consumption is best.
If you can't reduce, reuse. If it can't be reused, recycle it.

I think we thought recycling was enough.

------
Publik_Emily
My understanding was that since China decided to stop taking in the world's
plastic and toxic recycling, it's now virtually impossible to get rid of this
stuff. Allegedly some of it is now dumped at sea.

------
masonic
Key to the economics of it working was that profit from redeemables (beverage
cans, bottles) would pay for the rest of the process. Then came people
"harvesting" out all the valuable elements.

------
rasengan0
So is there a startup disruptive market here?

Since less than clean recyclables is the new environmental pollution, is there
an UberTrash in sight?

Honey, I have a new gig, I pick up trash and my hours are flexible. Wee!

------
jiaweihli
How do compostable products compare to recyclable ones? How much better/worse
are they and how much impact do they have?

~~~
pfranz
Just my opinion, but compostable doesn't make that great of a product in a lot
of places they're being pushed. I've seen a bunch of places switch to
compostable silverware and cups. The silverware is a lot less durable than
plastic (which is already a low bar) and coffee lids don't fit properly. One
place I frequent uses them and I constantly hear others complain and discover
this for themselves. I sound like an old man, but I am often very explicit
about getting a mug of coffee when I order, but a different person fulfills
the order and often puts it in a compostable cup.

Poor products turns people off to that technology and discourages me from
ordering coffee.

~~~
icebraining
Arguably, being annoying is a feature, not a bug; we want to discourage
single-use packaging and get people to bring their own reusable containers.

~~~
pfranz
I was trying to think of a way to write my first comment without coming across
as insensitive to the environment. I much prefer the cheapest reusable
containers to most expensive disposable. I believe it's common for people in
Japan to carry their own towels to dry their hands. I think it's becoming more
common for people in China and Japan to carry their own cutlery. I hope that
catches on.

My preference would be to get coffee in a mug, which they offer (afaik they
don't offer byo containers), but due to whatever other incentives (poor
communication between workers when ordering or not wanting to wash a dish) I
often get a compostable disposable cup.

~~~
icebraining
FWIW, I didn't think your comment was insensitive; mine was about the
population in general, not targeted at you.

------
grizzles
A problem crying out for a robotic solution.

------
pointillistic
Isn't burning the trash also hurts the environment?

~~~
ineedasername
Extremely high temperatures mitigate most of that.

------
andrew_
Where's Mr. Fusion when you really need it?

------
aviv
Recycling is treating the symptom and not the root cause. The real problem is
people buying too much crap they don't really need or shouldn't consume in the
first place.

~~~
glial
That's a narrow perspective - the root case is the broader expectations about
packaging, from both producers and consumers. Lots of food comes wrapped in
single-use plastic, too. It's one way to keep food shelf-stable. We need
alternative packaging (or package re-use), since can't stop buying food.

~~~
aviv
I would argue most of what you are referring to as "food" is not and should
not be considered food for humans though.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
This is a rather elitist perspective.

~~~
aviv
Eating fruits and vegetables that can easily be composted is elitist? News to
me.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
Ever heard of a food desert?

~~~
aviv
Give me a break. First address the atrosious food consumption habits within
the 94% of US population who do not live in so called food deserts before it
can be used to justify the behavior of the vast majority.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
Poverty? Marketing?

~~~
aviv
What? It's often helpful to form a full sentence if you want others to engage
in a discussion with you.

~~~
dang
Since we asked you repeatedly not to do flamewars like this, I've banned this
account.

~~~
aviv2
How was that a flamewar? I replied to a person who used 2 words in a
discussion where there was no clear relation to the comment being replied to,
and suggested they use a full sentence so that I can understand their point
coherently.

~~~
dang
The comment was insulting, and you'd already crossed into incivility before
that. The reason we're banning you, though, is that you've done this way too
much on HN—usually on the same topic—and ignored our requests to stop.

~~~
aviv2
It is solely your own opinion that it was insulting. I believe your
opinion/judgement of that comment is clouded by your overall personal
disapproval and disagreement with my political and health-related views.

I simply stated that in order to have a discussion, a full sentence should be
used. The commenter asking "Poverty? Marketing?" added absolutely nothing to
the conversation and I asked him/her to clarify.

The other times that you say I've "crossed into incivility" have already been
addressed by your previous warning to me from a few months ago, which I have
since made it a point to not engage in what you referred to at the time as
flamewars with regards to my topics. My comments often generate healthy
debates and conversation.

------
nullc
Recycling is good for the world.

NO! YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG!!

Recycling is NOT good for the world. It is bad for the environment, it is bad
for our health, and it is bad for our economy. I’m not kidding. Recycling is
not good for the environment. It is destructive to the earth and it is a major
contributor to global warming. Recycling is not good for our health. It
contributes to obesity and diseases like heart disease and cancer. Recycling
is bad for our economy. It increases the cost of a product, and in turn, the
price of everything that is made with that product. Recycling is not good for
our nation. We pay a tremendous price for the privilege of having the world’s
most advanced and efficient recycling system. Recycling is a huge, colossal
waste of time, energy, money, and resources. And THAT is why we need to get
back to basics and get back to basics in our recycling efforts. One of the
best ways to start is to look at the process of creating a paper product. When
you make a paper product, it is basically a long chain of materials.
Everything from the raw materials (wood, cardboard, paper, etc.), to the
reagents (dyes, solvents, etc.) to the printing equipment (chemicals, glue,
paper, ink, etc.), to the packaging, to the packaging materials (mercury,
chemicals, etc.) to the processing equipment (heating, cooling, etc.), to the
packaging materials, to the packaging materials that are shipped overseas and
to the packaging materials that are used in the United States. Each step along
the way creates tons of waste that we constantly have to clean up. The process
of making a paper product is a very wasteful one. But the end result is
something that all of us need to consume. And if we want to keep the recycling
process running efficiently, then we really need to think about each and every
step that goes into making a paper product.

~~~
GistNoesis
Nice try GPT-2 :)

