I spend a lot of time and effort rinsing out cans and glass and plastic bottles. As I mentioned in this thread, I’m kind of O-C about it.
I found a local place that buys aluminum, so a few times I took muy cans there, but I only get about 2 (.35 per pound, although I heard that it’s now up to $.52) per 13-gallon garbage bag. That’s $2 for a LOT of rinsing, crushing and bagging (not to mention the drinking
The last time I went it looked like it was going to be so much trouble that I just gave my 3 bags to some guys in a car loaded down in scrap metal.
Recently my brother and his family moved near Nashville, TN. They took their recycling to the next town over, since their own town didn’t have a recycling place. Somebody there checked their license plates and told that they could leave their stuff that time, but the next time they would be charged. It seems that it costs the county/city money to handle recycling, so they don’t want people from the next county over bringing them white elephants. ISTM that recyclables should be able to be sold for more than the cost of collecting them. Otherwise, what is the point?
Is my logic flawed? Does the implication that it actually costs a city/county more money than they can get to recycle indicate that it’s not worth the effort?
If #1 is true, are some things worth recycling? Should I take my aluminum cans in and throw away the rest? Or maybe the cans and glass but toss the pizza boxes? What, if anything, is worth my trouble?
I got the impression (probably from here) that any plastic without a “2” in the triangle probably isn’t worth recycling. What about cans, glass, “2” bottles, cardboard, and “mixed paper”?
This topic comes up every so often. I’m too lazy to search for the old threads right now, but for starters, here’s Cecil old response:
And a more recent Popular Mechanics article:
Basically, it depends on whether your goal is financial or environmental, and then again on the specific materials and the specific markets in your area. Some areas bypass the question altogether by burning some of their recyclables for energy instead.
I think much of recycling is a boondoggle and a subsidy of the glass industry. I would like to see curbside recycling end. Discourage the use of glass. Let economics take care of metal, and the rest incinerate with energy recovery. Recycling glass is very energy intensive.
Isn’t glass ultimately environmentally inert, anyway? It’s heavy for shipping, but over time it will break back down to sand, won’t it? Does the landfill environment prevent this?
I keep hearing conflicting information about Chicago’s recycling. My building has bins and I put clean cardboard in there, but I can’t be soused to research further. I throw all the cat food tins and whatnot out in the dumpsters. My workplace is fairly vigilant about recycling, and takes our own bins of stuff (mixed, only brown cardboard separated) to a place a couple times a week, no pickup service.
This is going to sound horribly naive, but doesn’t it make sense to recycle since recyclable materials are finite, and energy is infinite?
(What I mean is that since our planet is given energy from the sun, and planetary forces create waves which can be used for energy, we have energy sources that will last billions of years.)
I don’t know about the intrinsic economics, but at least for my local town, recycling is worth it.
The town gets charged per truckload of garbage (something like $400), but actually gets paid (a nominal amount, but still something) per load of cardboard/plastic/metal. It’s a pain to separate everything, but hopefully I’m saving the municipality some money that they won’t take out of my taxes.
I can’t imagine it makes sense to recycle if you actually drive to another town. In my county we have curbside pickup once a week. I used to have plenty of recycling, but lifestyle changes have eliminated most of it without any conscious intention of being green. Maybe being cheap is actually pretty green. I’ve noticed it takes me at least two weeks to fill a garbage can to take to the curb.
For instance, I usually buy the Crystal Light powder and mix it with tap water. Ditto on the coffee. That eliminates a lot of bottles and cans.
At current prices and excessive hassle, recycling is too expensive for me to consider. All my cans go into the trash along with the plastic bottles. If someone wants to recycle it in 50 years, they can mine our landfills and more power to them.
Save the planet? Not if it costs me more than trashing the planet.
I hope for the sake of your descendants that not too many other people share your attitude.
In answer to the OP, while it may be that it costs money to recycle, the alternative isn’t “free”. It costs a lot of money to throw stuff into landfill, too, and those costs will only go up with landfill taxes etc.
It amazes me how many people try to badmouth recycling as pointless. As markdash says, raw materials are finite, so it makes sense to reuse them, even if it might take an extra few minutes of your life to rinse and dump it in a separate bin, that you could have spent watching Jersey Shore.
We have no landfill taxes. I pay to dispose of trash. The cost to dispose is cheaper than the cost to recycle. If that ratio changes, I will re-evaluate the situation.
it’s not pointless, it just isn’t cost effective. Show me a recycling plan that is, and I’ll use it.
You make cost-effective choices all the time – what to buy for lunch, what to use for transportation. Why should this be any different?
I assume you don’t buy the cheapest, crappiest food for lunch, because you want to put something decent into your body. So why take the cheapest, crappiest option to dispose of rubbish?
There are important externalities. It’s not surprising that you and others would ignore these and act solely in your own interest. However, if the question is about what policy we should adopt as a society, the externalities are part of the equation. Perhaps you will argue that we shouldn’t care about future generations at all, but there are externalities that affect living people as well.
Ya know how every once in a while you have a D’oh, moment. A light turns on in your head. Something just sort of makes sense to you. Like how a sub sandwich is called a sub because it looks like a submarine (or that a submarine is called a sub-marine because it goes under-water). Not that you couldn’t figure it out, you just never thought about it.
Anyways, 5 or 6 years ago I had one of those with the whole “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” thing. They’re in order of importance. So yes, being cheap (reducing) is being green. It’s great to recycle, but it’s better to reuse and even better to just not use things in the first place.
The question is, how much energy can we use to recycle small amounts of stuff. Better to not use what we don’t need.
I applaud the trend to reusable bags. When I go to my bank to get cash, I use the same laminated card each time instead of a check.
I fight Wal*Mart tooth and nail over my prescription packaging. They insist blister packed ones inside blue plastic boxes. I refuse to take them and make them cough up loose pills in bottles. My church collects the bottles for reuse.
Stuff I print out for myself goes on the back of paper that would otherwise be discarded. I am using synthetic oil that can be run longer.
I don’t keep pets. Instead, I foster puppies until they are old enough to be trained as service dogs.
A current project is making a new brake shoe for my 40 year old lawn mower out of an old pad off my car.
There is an interesting article in the Freakonomics blog about a behavior they dub conspicuous conservation. The authors say that some people want to flaunt their green credentials and buy a Prius instead another hybrid because the Prius has a distinctive appearance that declares to everyone, “I’m saving the world”, while they are driving 20 miles to Whole Foods.
Much of the data is pretty old. Recycling is getting more and more efficient. Generally, if you factor in the cost of NOT adding to dumps, it breaks even.
Aluminum of course is very cost effective, glass & plastic less so.
