4 ms·

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

by 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.
Scoundreller 4y ago
2020 seems like a bad time to look at. Recycling is mostly exported and ships/shipping containers were at a huge premium. Along with many countries effectively closed. Local landfilling would look very favourable in that environment.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  You can look at 2019. What changed was not the US Economy, but China refusing to accept US trash, which happened in 2018. Some articles: https://www.rethinkdisposable.org/ban-china-ending-recycling-we-know-it https://www.rethinkdisposable.org/ban-china-ending-recycling... https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-i... https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/18/18271470/us-cities-stop-recycling-china-ban-on-recycles https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/18/18271470/us-cities-s...
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    I'd like to think that this means countries will have to start taking care of their own waste too. In reality, some other developing country will import it at a slightly higher processing/shipping cost.
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      Africa has long been where a lot of US trash (which is ostensibly "recycled") is being dumped. But as in many other fields, China offered the scale and infrastructure to efficiently huge quantities of Western waste that Africa lacks. Lack of proper rail-port infrastructure prevents Africa from replacing China. But your larger point is absolutely correct -- nothing that is supposedly "recycled" should ever leave our shores until it has been transformed into post-recycled content. But again, it's far too expensive to actually recycle, so the problem is the dishonesty -- if something isn't technically feasible, then we should have this information and full disclosure about what can and cannot be recycled and what the various price points are so that communities can make informed decisions. It might be better, for example, to divert a lot of the money we spend on existing recycling subsidies to researching better automation techniques for recycling, but as long as firms are able to claim that they are recycling when they are just exporting waste, then this is unfair competition against those firms that really do want to design a real recycling program.

by rsj_hn 4y ago

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.

Scoundreller 4y ago

2020 seems like a bad time to look at. Recycling is mostly exported and ships/shipping containers were at a huge premium. Along with many countries effectively closed. Local landfilling would look very favourable in that environment.

rsj_hn 4y ago
You can look at 2019. What changed was not the US Economy, but China refusing to accept US trash, which happened in 2018. Some articles: https://www.rethinkdisposable.org/ban-china-ending-recycling-we-know-it https://www.rethinkdisposable.org/ban-china-ending-recycling... https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-i... https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/18/18271470/us-cities-stop-recycling-china-ban-on-recycles https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/18/18271470/us-cities-s...
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  I'd like to think that this means countries will have to start taking care of their own waste too. In reality, some other developing country will import it at a slightly higher processing/shipping cost.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    Africa has long been where a lot of US trash (which is ostensibly "recycled") is being dumped. But as in many other fields, China offered the scale and infrastructure to efficiently huge quantities of Western waste that Africa lacks. Lack of proper rail-port infrastructure prevents Africa from replacing China. But your larger point is absolutely correct -- nothing that is supposedly "recycled" should ever leave our shores until it has been transformed into post-recycled content. But again, it's far too expensive to actually recycle, so the problem is the dishonesty -- if something isn't technically feasible, then we should have this information and full disclosure about what can and cannot be recycled and what the various price points are so that communities can make informed decisions. It might be better, for example, to divert a lot of the money we spend on existing recycling subsidies to researching better automation techniques for recycling, but as long as firms are able to claim that they are recycling when they are just exporting waste, then this is unfair competition against those firms that really do want to design a real recycling program.