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After aluminum it gets harder to break even recycling. The State of WI kicks $$ in to try to make more viable, glass, a lot of the plastics, whatever else.

I'm not a recycling fanboy, but when you see observations or stats like this I'm always curious - how broadly has the idea of breaking even been viewed?

For example, if it's just the revenue from selling the recycle materials less the additional cost of gathering and processing them, that seems inaccurate. Shouldn't the equation also include the cost avoided for dumping all those recycled items at the landfill, shipping them there if more than to recycling, etc? Sure there's not a per-piece fee for each can that goes to a landfill, but landfills cost a metric crapton to build and maintain these days and diverting a lot of tonnage or cubic yards of trash away from those has to yield significant savings on top of any piddly revenue from recycled materials.

Of course, in the month-to-month budget focus of a municipality that may not get much credit, but over the 5-20 years a municipality has to support a landfill it matters.

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Originally posted by Fredward:
My community only recycles cardboard on a voluntary basis. If you want to, bring it to the recycling center. If not, throw it in the dumpster, the ONLY can you have. Not 7 cans in various colors.

Jerkwagons in my town decided to "mandate" recycling. Sort of. The contracted a carrier to pick up the new blue bins every other week. The bin costs an extra $6 a month on the water/sewer/trash bill. You can opt out if you'd like, but if you do they won't pick up the "regular" trash in the green cans either. Oh, and they closed all the handy, easy-to-get-to recycling centers (parking lots with bins) across town.

So let's see: charge me more to do something for me that I was doing for you voluntarily. Then allow me to opt out, but in return you'll do less for me than you were doing before.

Oh, and elect not to take cardboard at all (whereas the centers actually had bins for cardboard).

Nice job, town management.
Not.

If you have ever seen or toured an actual recycling center (not the transfer station where you drop it off) - you will see why the processes involved are both man-power intensive and expensive. (even with modern machinery)

Additionally, many of these recycling centers were not built to handle the huge volumes they began experiencing 10-12 years ago. Back in the 2010 time frame most of these centers would start diverting materials to landfills and burn plants around 11am due to already receiving a full-days volumes of plastic and corrugated.

The only thing I bother sorting for recycling is cardboard, and that's mainly because otherwise my lone city-mandated trash can would fill up too quickly otherwise. The city won't take any trash that's not in the can unless you pay extra for special city overflow bags, and they tack on a few dollar fee if your can is so full that the lid won't close on pickup day.


I do recall the uproar from several years ago when it was discovered that another local city was actually sending all their recycling to the landfill, despite offering separate recycling pickup. When confronted, the city explained that they couldn't afford the high cost of recycling, and it was much cheaper to just dump it. All the hippies that had been smugly sorting their recycling to save the planet about lost their minds.

Two years ago they stopped the brush pickup program here that had been going on for like forever. You would put your brush at the curb and they would come with a huge diesel powered grinder and turn it into mulch. You could also put out logs up to about 8 inch diameter and not too heavy for one guy to lift.

Well they got the bright idea to stop that and now we need to tie and neatly tie and bundle brush on trash pickup day with a paid sticker on each bundle - WTF

I called the guy in charge of this and he gave me a bunch of bullshit reasons why they did this and the "benefits". I told him in so many words that it was the stupidest thing ever, especially considering our outrageously high property taxes. He also admitted that they toss all the brush into the land fill. So knowing that I now use spare space in my garbage bin for yard waste. One day wife had a bunch of bags of sod and stuff and was going to put stickers on them before I intervened saying "fuck that, looks like garbage too me" and I tossed them into the garbage bin. I got a chuckle hearing the engine moan lifting our garbage bin that morning and the loud noise it made pouring into the dumpster - oh well.

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Originally posted by grumpy1:

quote:

Originally posted by cruiser68:
I have a few friends in the waste management business. They tell me 80% or more of the residential recycling goes in the same landfill as the trash as it is simply not economical to recycle most material from residential recycling.

I had read that also and thanks for confirming. I think carboard is one item that they can recycle and make a profit, at last on a larger scale. I worked in grocery store in high school in the late 60s/early 70s and we always baled the cardboard even back then. I made up plenty of bales myself and always was wary of ratcheting the metal strapping too tight LOL.

Cans are the thing that it is efficient to recycle. Cardboard gets soiled too easily and once it is soiled they just trash it.

I have three cans outside. One for "garbage", one for recycling and one for yard debris. A little while back they started saying you can include waste food in with the yard debris - I assume it just all goes into the same big compost heap. I toss mostly cardboard and some plastic jugs in the recycling bin. Aluminum cans they want cleaned and the labels removed first. OK, I can rinse them out, but peeling labels off is a PITA so I usually don't bother and it all goes in the garbage.

Oh yeah. The cans themselves. On the recycling can the lid only extends just barely to the rear edge of the can. So when it rains, water collects on top of the lid. Then when you open the lid, instead of running off the back onto the ground, the water dumps into the can, soaking the cardboard and probably ruining it. I wonder what brainiac thought that one up.

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Originally posted by RogueJSK:
All the hippies that had been smugly sorting their recycling to save the planet about lost their minds.

Small loss..