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Palo Alto asked where its recycling went. The answer wasn’t pretty

Scoundreller 4y ago
> about 40% of its recyclable material stays in North America, where it’s supposed to be processed according to strict environmental and labor standards. The other roughly 60% goes abroad, mainly to Asia My guess is that if you broke it down, all of the metal stays on-shore, a mix of the paper and all the plastic gets exported.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  100% of locally recycled aluminum cans, aluminum foil, tin and glass. It also has found domestic markets for 99% of local high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic (which is commonly used for milk jugs and shampoo bottles), as well as for 99% of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic (the type that is often used for soft drink bottles). Other plastics, paper and 95% of carboard go abroad, the latter two don't seem to be much of a problem, but the other hard and film plastics are probably the ones most likely to be mishandled, but since they seem to do a decent job of sorting the stuff, they likely have greater value than from other jurisdictions and so less likely to end up with such outfits. edit: checking the report, the hard and film plastics are only about 1% of the 60% that gets shipped, with about 40% being carbdoard and 20% being paper (presumably by weight).
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Thanks for the info. Export of cardboard makes sense: lots of trees in North America, so they can make the 'new' stuff, while other places can't. And at worst, it burns somewhat cleanly.
rsj_hn 4y ago
There is an economic problem here, which is that only a small subset of trash can be recycled efficiently -- metals, some paper. For everything else, it's very expensive or just impossible to recycle, and those costs are rising because they are labor intensive. You have to pay people to pick through the trash and remove items because the automated means are very crude and and only give you a first pass sort. So there is no way that cities can afford to actually recycle the vast quantities of garbage their citizens produce. But the citizens want to think of themselves as recycling, and so middlemen appear that say they recycle but they only recycle the portion that is economically viable, and export the rest. If you want a greater portion recycled, you will need to pay them much more. In terms of the costs, back in 2020, it cost about $75-80 per ton to "recycle" in the current sense. Households pay about $40 per ton for ordinary trash disposal -- e.g. landfills -- and no city that I know of has the political courage to charge double for recycling than for trash, even though that's what it costs, so the city ends up spending money that should go to parks or education on hiding economic realities from its citizens. And that $80/ton includes exporting much of the waste overseas where it is not recycled. To actually recycle 100% of the material put into recycling bins, the costs are unknown because no one has been able to do it on a sustained basis - again, this is because our automated means of sorting are very crude, and many commodities are sufficiently cheap that recycling isn't cost effective. I expect that in the future, recycling and trash will merge -- we will just accept that some of what we throw away can be recycled and the rest cannot, and that determination is a function of market prices for commodities, so that the percentage of waste recycled will be variable and people will get used to this rather than pretending everything thrown in the green bin is recycled. Also in the future, people will be charged extra for recycling to reflect the underlying costs, effectively discouraging them from purchasing more metals/papers than they need. The idea that recycling is a compound word intended to describe a circular flow of commodities will become a subject for bar trivia, while its real meaning will become "the trash I put in the green bin".
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  > I expect that in the future, recycling and trash will merge Isn't that what San Francisco already does with collected household garbage, with manual sortation to cherry-pick whatever's worth recycling?
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    When I was in SF, they still had the different bins, and most people believed that what they put in the green bin was recycled (assuming they put the correct items in there). But what was actually happening I don't know. I do see "recycling" more and more being used as a synonym for trash, including the little computer icon, but also in common parlance.
    - grandmczeb 4y ago
      That’s still true (although green bins are for compost/yard waste and blue bins are for recycling.) https://www.recology.com/recology-san-francisco/your-three-carts/ https://www.recology.com/recology-san-francisco/your-three-c...
    - kevinventullo 4y ago
      To be fair to the computer icon, I think recycling is probably a better symbol since you do get that disk space back.
- dublinben 4y ago
  As children, we were taught to "reduce, reuse, recycle" in that order. However, the first two can be inconvenient and contrary to the interests of enormous industries that sell petroleum products or consumer packaged goods like bottled beverages. So as a result, we've mostly given up on anything other than separating our garbage into different bins, which is enough to make us feel like we've done our part for the environment.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  > some paper. For everything else, it's very expensive or just impossible to recycle, and those costs are rising because they are labor intensive. You have Paper and plastic are just processed trees and oil, in other words: fuel. Just really dirty, but nearly as valuable as coal per kg if you don’t have any environmental controls to worry about. Paris has the biggest incinerator in europe on its territory and probably puts most of its garbage and much of its “recycling” in there. Glass probably gets landfilled, but can be dumped in a less regulated landfill (mix with construction waste, don’t need to cap or collect leachate or methane). Hard to say if the separate collection streams pay off, but the sorting is a cost the government doesn’t pay for.
Symbiote 4y ago
Just yesterday Copenhagen commune sent me a leaflet on recycling. It has statistics for the proportion of each waste stream that is recycled, which I hadn't seen before. 99% of glass (reused whole bottles, re-melted to new glass) 98% of cardboard (more cardboard) 98% of paper (more paper, cardboard) 97% of indoor wood (chipboard) 82% of food waste (biogas, fertilizer) 82% of garden waste (heat, fertilizer) 72% of food/drink cartons (cardboard, presumably the aluminium is used too) 71% of plastic (packaging, car parts) ??% of metal waste ??% of electronic waste ??% of battery waste (for these two it's apparently not the city's responsibility) Hazardous waste is not generally recycled Residual waste (the rest of the rubbish) is incinerated for district heat. (And yes, I have bins for all of those in my apartment building, except garden waste since there's no garden.) https://i.imgur.com/YNqLjL7.jpg https://i.imgur.com/YNqLjL7.jpg (in English).
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
These articles seem intentionally written to confuse. What exactly does Palo Alto sell to these brokers? Is it just a giant pile of mixed trash? Or is it the output of an MRF facility, which is bales of sorted materials. And if sorted, what kind of quality are they hitting? All boring questions that would have been useful, but not as clickbaity. edit: looks like they have a fairly advanced Mixed Waste facility (check out their embedded video) which is using AI for extracting recyclable/compostable material from just plain old trash. Not sure if that's in addition to or a replacement for any kind of seperate recycling. https://bulkhandlingsystems.com/greenwaste-recovery-opens-90-tph-mixed-waste-mrf/ https://bulkhandlingsystems.com/greenwaste-recovery-opens-90...
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This seems to be a more senstationalised recap of this story from January, when the report was released: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2022/01/28/where-do-your-recyclables-go-palo-alto-struggles-to-track-their-destination-as-material-heads-abroad https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2022/01/28/where-do-your...

> about 40% of its recyclable material stays in North America, where it’s supposed to be processed according to strict environmental and labor standards. The other roughly 60% goes abroad, mainly to Asia My guess is that if you broke it down, all of the metal stays on-shore, a mix of the paper and all the plastic gets exported.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
100% of locally recycled aluminum cans, aluminum foil, tin and glass. It also has found domestic markets for 99% of local high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic (which is commonly used for milk jugs and shampoo bottles), as well as for 99% of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic (the type that is often used for soft drink bottles). Other plastics, paper and 95% of carboard go abroad, the latter two don't seem to be much of a problem, but the other hard and film plastics are probably the ones most likely to be mishandled, but since they seem to do a decent job of sorting the stuff, they likely have greater value than from other jurisdictions and so less likely to end up with such outfits. edit: checking the report, the hard and film plastics are only about 1% of the 60% that gets shipped, with about 40% being carbdoard and 20% being paper (presumably by weight).
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Thanks for the info. Export of cardboard makes sense: lots of trees in North America, so they can make the 'new' stuff, while other places can't. And at worst, it burns somewhat cleanly.

rsj_hn 4y ago

There is an economic problem here, which is that only a small subset of trash can be recycled efficiently -- metals, some paper. For everything else, it's very expensive or just impossible to recycle, and those costs are rising because they are labor intensive. You have to pay people to pick through the trash and remove items because the automated means are very crude and and only give you a first pass sort. So there is no way that cities can afford to actually recycle the vast quantities of garbage their citizens produce. But the citizens want to think of themselves as recycling, and so middlemen appear that say they recycle but they only recycle the portion that is economically viable, and export the rest. If you want a greater portion recycled, you will need to pay them much more. In terms of the costs, back in 2020, it cost about $75-80 per ton to "recycle" in the current sense. Households pay about $40 per ton for ordinary trash disposal -- e.g. landfills -- and no city that I know of has the political courage to charge double for recycling than for trash, even though that's what it costs, so the city ends up spending money that should go to parks or education on hiding economic realities from its citizens. And that $80/ton includes exporting much of the waste overseas where it is not recycled. To actually recycle 100% of the material put into recycling bins, the costs are unknown because no one has been able to do it on a sustained basis - again, this is because our automated means of sorting are very crude, and many commodities are sufficiently cheap that recycling isn't cost effective. I expect that in the future, recycling and trash will merge -- we will just accept that some of what we throw away can be recycled and the rest cannot, and that determination is a function of market prices for commodities, so that the percentage of waste recycled will be variable and people will get used to this rather than pretending everything thrown in the green bin is recycled. Also in the future, people will be charged extra for recycling to reflect the underlying costs, effectively discouraging them from purchasing more metals/papers than they need. The idea that recycling is a compound word intended to describe a circular flow of commodities will become a subject for bar trivia, while its real meaning will become "the trash I put in the green bin".

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
> I expect that in the future, recycling and trash will merge Isn't that what San Francisco already does with collected household garbage, with manual sortation to cherry-pick whatever's worth recycling?
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  When I was in SF, they still had the different bins, and most people believed that what they put in the green bin was recycled (assuming they put the correct items in there). But what was actually happening I don't know. I do see "recycling" more and more being used as a synonym for trash, including the little computer icon, but also in common parlance.
  - grandmczeb 4y ago
    That’s still true (although green bins are for compost/yard waste and blue bins are for recycling.) https://www.recology.com/recology-san-francisco/your-three-carts/ https://www.recology.com/recology-san-francisco/your-three-c...
  - kevinventullo 4y ago
    To be fair to the computer icon, I think recycling is probably a better symbol since you do get that disk space back.
dublinben 4y ago
As children, we were taught to "reduce, reuse, recycle" in that order. However, the first two can be inconvenient and contrary to the interests of enormous industries that sell petroleum products or consumer packaged goods like bottled beverages. So as a result, we've mostly given up on anything other than separating our garbage into different bins, which is enough to make us feel like we've done our part for the environment.
Scoundreller 4y ago
> some paper. For everything else, it's very expensive or just impossible to recycle, and those costs are rising because they are labor intensive. You have Paper and plastic are just processed trees and oil, in other words: fuel. Just really dirty, but nearly as valuable as coal per kg if you don’t have any environmental controls to worry about. Paris has the biggest incinerator in europe on its territory and probably puts most of its garbage and much of its “recycling” in there. Glass probably gets landfilled, but can be dumped in a less regulated landfill (mix with construction waste, don’t need to cap or collect leachate or methane). Hard to say if the separate collection streams pay off, but the sorting is a cost the government doesn’t pay for.

Symbiote 4y ago

Just yesterday Copenhagen commune sent me a leaflet on recycling. It has statistics for the proportion of each waste stream that is recycled, which I hadn't seen before. 99% of glass (reused whole bottles, re-melted to new glass) 98% of cardboard (more cardboard) 98% of paper (more paper, cardboard) 97% of indoor wood (chipboard) 82% of food waste (biogas, fertilizer) 82% of garden waste (heat, fertilizer) 72% of food/drink cartons (cardboard, presumably the aluminium is used too) 71% of plastic (packaging, car parts) ??% of metal waste ??% of electronic waste ??% of battery waste (for these two it's apparently not the city's responsibility) Hazardous waste is not generally recycled Residual waste (the rest of the rubbish) is incinerated for district heat. (And yes, I have bins for all of those in my apartment building, except garden waste since there's no garden.) https://i.imgur.com/YNqLjL7.jpg https://i.imgur.com/YNqLjL7.jpg (in English).

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

These articles seem intentionally written to confuse. What exactly does Palo Alto sell to these brokers? Is it just a giant pile of mixed trash? Or is it the output of an MRF facility, which is bales of sorted materials. And if sorted, what kind of quality are they hitting? All boring questions that would have been useful, but not as clickbaity. edit: looks like they have a fairly advanced Mixed Waste facility (check out their embedded video) which is using AI for extracting recyclable/compostable material from just plain old trash. Not sure if that's in addition to or a replacement for any kind of seperate recycling. https://bulkhandlingsystems.com/greenwaste-recovery-opens-90-tph-mixed-waste-mrf/ https://bulkhandlingsystems.com/greenwaste-recovery-opens-90...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

This seems to be a more senstationalised recap of this story from January, when the report was released: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2022/01/28/where-do-your-recyclables-go-palo-alto-struggles-to-track-their-destination-as-material-heads-abroad https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2022/01/28/where-do-your...