4 ms·
There was, and still is, actual recycling. I remember taking the (sorted) recyclables to a recycling business, which paid by the pound. I remember watching th
by username223 8y ago
There was, and still is, actual recycling. I remember taking the (sorted) recyclables to a recycling business, which paid by the pound. I remember watching the homeless guys in LA pick aluminum cans out of the blue bins early in the morning on trash day, presumably for the money.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the single-stream version were largely marketing (by weight). WM or whichever company picks out a few things that are valuable enough to separate, then treats the majority as waste.
- LorenPechtel 8y agoYup. Metals are actually worth recycling. Little else is.
- icelancer 8y agoIf a business or government pays you for it, then recycling is effective. If they don't, then obviously it isn't useful. I never really understood why people could not grasp this basic concept.
- xorfish 8y agoA much simpler concept is that you pay for the trash that you don't recycle. Switzerland recycles 93% of all glass bottles(color sorted by consumers) and 83% of all PET bottles. Everything else has to be burned in a plant with minimal emission to recycle energy. PET recycling is financed by a fee of around 2 cents per bottle that every manufacturer has to pay.
- sonar_un 8y agoRemember also that in Switzerland you pay for your trash bags. A bag that you have to throw away costs €1-2. Recycling is essentially free.
- pfdietz 8y agoHowever, if the charge for trash is too high, it encourages littering, illegal dumping, and discourages public waste receptacles (which encourages littering even more). This can only really work if the cost of disposal is baked into the goods at sale, and refunded for recycled goods. I suspect it would just end up causing people to use the landfills they have paid for.
- xorfish 8y agoCost is around one dollar per 35 litre bag. There are no landfills for common trash. Average is around 80 dollars per person per year. Less if you use PPP-Dollars. That is not enough to cover all cost of proper disposal, so the rest is payed by the state. Point is, it works. There is no excuse for other countries to do the same.
- tomjen3 8y agoDo consumers generally color sort? What about the eight percent of men who are color blind?