8 replies to this topic

[360texas]

Was just thinking where does our Fort Worth recycled refuse go? 

[JBB]

Anything other than cardboard and metal goes to the landfill.  There's no market for recycling anything else.  And cardboard and metal only get recycled when the collection companies have the labor to sort and process it.  I've heard that as much as 98% of recycling collected curbside ends up in landfills.  Most recycling is a feel good activity with little positive result.  Electronics recycling is worse for the environment than sending it to the landfill.  Electronics are sent to Asia where the metal is stripped and the plastics are burned.

[Stadtplan]

This is all around disappointing news.

[RD Milhollin]

If this is indeed the case there should be a congressional inquiry.

[Volare]

Years back it was a profitable enterprise for cities. They would ship it all in bulk to China for processing. But no longer.

It has ceased to be profitable for quite a while.

[elpingüino]

Sure enough, China stopped accepting our recyclables in 2017. Here's a Financial Times article from a few months later, Why the world's recycling system stopped working: China's refusal to become the West's dumping ground is forcing the world to face up to a waste crisis

[Bill Sievers]

It all comes down to a matter of economics.  If there's no money to be made, they'll be no recycling, plain and simple.  As JBB pointed out, generally recycling at face value is just a "feel good" activity for the masses.

[JBB]

A low volume of material that's actually recycled happened before the market collapsed.  The larger issue is the labor that it takes to sort the materials.  No city has residents sort by type and everything is co-mingled in the containers and trucks.  Plastics often have to be sorted by type.  A plastic soft drink or water bottle has 3 types of plastic that have to be separated: the lid, the label, and the bottle.  If the bottles aren't clean, they likely go to the landfill.

 

And there's nothing nefarious to investigate.  The collection companies aren't hiding anything.  Conditions that protect them and the cities are present in the terms that cities and customers agree upon.

[txbornviking]

an entertaining rundown...