This is my reading of the situation: Firms are disposing of their trash and “official recyclers” are being preempted from collecting some (valuable) portion of

This is my reading of the situation: Firms are disposing of their trash and “official recyclers” are being preempted from collecting some (valuable) portion of that trash by gangs. Clearly the recycling firms are taking a hit, but they’ve also agreed to take a risk. Consumers could equally choose to burn that cardboard in their furnaces to heat their buildings in winter, or something like that. There can be fluctuations in output of that trash. We’d all hope, generally, that the amount of trash worldwide will tend to decrease (though of course, so far it isn’t). As far as I’m concerned, this acceleration of the rate of collection of trash, an arms race between official and unofficial recyclers, should be considered a net positive for society: after all, a public service is being provided more efficiently to the community. Does this affect the profitability of the official firms, left to handle only the ‘undesirable’ fraction? Absolutely, but that needs to be handled by market mechanisms, readjusting (upwards) the price of disposal of the undesirable fraction of waste, which in turn will drive down the relative cost of using that cardboard that everybody apparently is so eager to pick off the sidewalk or pilfer out of the dumpsters. As usual, somebody has instituted a monopoly (trash collection) and is moaning that they’re not getting as much benefit from it as they had expected, because market forces are eroding away their pre-eminence. Isn’t this what what free-market economics is all about?