4 ms·

There's a wide space between "can be recycled" and "profitable enough that there's theft for base components that can be resold". That doesn't mean it won't be

There's a wide space between "can be recycled" and "profitable enough that there's theft for base components that can be resold". That doesn't mean it won't be profitable to harvest the gold (I don't know), but one does not imply the other. For example, paper recycling is profitable when centralized (barely), but even that's with most the pipeline subsidized, and it's not profitable to the degree that people are stealing paper to turn in because it's worth the effort.

deleted 3y ago
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kragen 3y ago
paper recycling is profitable without any subsidies at all, and people do sometimes steal paper to recycle it here in argentina there are tens of thousands of people who make a living by recycling, sorting through whatever trash they can get access to in order to find materials with enough resale value to scrape by. they haul plastic sacks or two-wheeled carts all over the metropolitan area, stacking them high with recyclables: aluminum, copper, car batteries, brass, whatever they can find. a crt tv left out on the curb will have its yoke broken off within an hour or three in order to harvest the copper. neighborhoods sometimes lose phone and internet service for months at a time because someone has recycled the cables. commemorative bronze plaques go missing from cemeteries but the recyclers are not called aluminieros or bronceros or cobreros, taking the name of their profession from aluminum, brass, or copper; they are instead referred to by the most abundant material they recycle they are the cartoneros, because what their carts are usually piled high with is cardboard, cartón (needless to say this activity is not subsidized)
- cthalupa 3y ago
  I don't understand how your comment implies a lack of subsidy, it only states that the people harvesting the material can make money off of it. Which would be true if it was subsidized, too.
  - kragen 3y ago
    it's not such a politically popular activity as to attract subsidies; it is tolerated and pitied rather than lauded and promoted
    - cthalupa 3y ago
      No one is saying they are subsidizing people scavenging. They're talking about farther up the chain.
      - kragen 3y ago
        i think rather that the activities further up the chain are profitmaking industries that are, on net, taxed rather than subsidized
- kbenson 3y ago
  > people do sometimes steal paper to recycle it > they are the cartoneros, because what their carts are usually piled high with is cardboard, cartón Paper, or coardboard? It's unclear whether you're referring to cardboard as paper, because after your assertion the only thing possibly linked to it in the rest of the comment is your references to cardboard. Cardboard is not paper. They share base components, but referring to cardboard as paper is akin to referring to a chair as a board. A chair is made of wood, and may be made of multiple boards, but if we're talking about the qualities and price of boards and you start trying to refute that with the price of chairs, people are going to call you out as losing the thread, rightly so. For what it's worth, the subsidies I was referring to were the governmental ones in the U.S. where recycling centers and trash services can get funds, tax breaks, or special rates on lending when dealing with recycling which means all recycling done through those trash services are in some part subsidized by the state. At best that usually means you might get your recycling picked up for free or with reduced additional charges, but for the average person in the U.S. paper recycing is not worthwhile at an individual scale. Apparently it pays something around $50-$75 a ton, which isn't nothing, and might be worth doing in some locales, but I have to imagine the logistics of moving material of that weight on a regular basis to where it can be accepted means there are much more lucrative materials to harvest (either it's a long haul for most people, or I imagine middle men accepting it locally and transferring it are going to take a large cut).
  - kragen 3y ago
    mostly cartoneros recycle what the biz refers to as corrugated fiberboard, which most people call cardboard in english. it's made of paper and glue there are different kinds of paper, which require different recycling streams; cartoneros will accept some others but not all your talk about 'losing the thread' makes me think you are playing some kind of game where the objective is not to find out what the truth is but to sound convincing even if what you are saying is false i am not playing that game. as far as i'm concerned, it's up to you to find out the truth, or not, not up to me to shove it down your throat, though i'm happy to provide relevant information i am aware that in the usa recycling, even fake recycling, is heavily subsidized. that's why i was providing information about what happens in places where subsidies for recycling are scarce to nonexistent. almost nobody recycles plastic here (except for small programs that are subsidized and do things like recycle polypropylene bottlecaps), and only big operators recycle steel. but paper — specifically the kind of paper that corrugated fiberboard is made of — is abundantly recycled; it's not nearly as remunerative as brass, copper, aluminum, or lead, but it's the bread and butter of the cartoneros because people discard it in much higher volumes i don't think it pays anywhere close to US$75 per tonne though, maybe a tenth of that

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kragen 3y ago

paper recycling is profitable without any subsidies at all, and people do sometimes steal paper to recycle it here in argentina there are tens of thousands of people who make a living by recycling, sorting through whatever trash they can get access to in order to find materials with enough resale value to scrape by. they haul plastic sacks or two-wheeled carts all over the metropolitan area, stacking them high with recyclables: aluminum, copper, car batteries, brass, whatever they can find. a crt tv left out on the curb will have its yoke broken off within an hour or three in order to harvest the copper. neighborhoods sometimes lose phone and internet service for months at a time because someone has recycled the cables. commemorative bronze plaques go missing from cemeteries but the recyclers are not called aluminieros or bronceros or cobreros, taking the name of their profession from aluminum, brass, or copper; they are instead referred to by the most abundant material they recycle they are the cartoneros, because what their carts are usually piled high with is cardboard, cartón (needless to say this activity is not subsidized)

cthalupa 3y ago
I don't understand how your comment implies a lack of subsidy, it only states that the people harvesting the material can make money off of it. Which would be true if it was subsidized, too.
- kragen 3y ago
  it's not such a politically popular activity as to attract subsidies; it is tolerated and pitied rather than lauded and promoted
  - cthalupa 3y ago
    No one is saying they are subsidizing people scavenging. They're talking about farther up the chain.
    - kragen 3y ago
      i think rather that the activities further up the chain are profitmaking industries that are, on net, taxed rather than subsidized
kbenson 3y ago
> people do sometimes steal paper to recycle it > they are the cartoneros, because what their carts are usually piled high with is cardboard, cartón Paper, or coardboard? It's unclear whether you're referring to cardboard as paper, because after your assertion the only thing possibly linked to it in the rest of the comment is your references to cardboard. Cardboard is not paper. They share base components, but referring to cardboard as paper is akin to referring to a chair as a board. A chair is made of wood, and may be made of multiple boards, but if we're talking about the qualities and price of boards and you start trying to refute that with the price of chairs, people are going to call you out as losing the thread, rightly so. For what it's worth, the subsidies I was referring to were the governmental ones in the U.S. where recycling centers and trash services can get funds, tax breaks, or special rates on lending when dealing with recycling which means all recycling done through those trash services are in some part subsidized by the state. At best that usually means you might get your recycling picked up for free or with reduced additional charges, but for the average person in the U.S. paper recycing is not worthwhile at an individual scale. Apparently it pays something around $50-$75 a ton, which isn't nothing, and might be worth doing in some locales, but I have to imagine the logistics of moving material of that weight on a regular basis to where it can be accepted means there are much more lucrative materials to harvest (either it's a long haul for most people, or I imagine middle men accepting it locally and transferring it are going to take a large cut).
- kragen 3y ago
  mostly cartoneros recycle what the biz refers to as corrugated fiberboard, which most people call cardboard in english. it's made of paper and glue there are different kinds of paper, which require different recycling streams; cartoneros will accept some others but not all your talk about 'losing the thread' makes me think you are playing some kind of game where the objective is not to find out what the truth is but to sound convincing even if what you are saying is false i am not playing that game. as far as i'm concerned, it's up to you to find out the truth, or not, not up to me to shove it down your throat, though i'm happy to provide relevant information i am aware that in the usa recycling, even fake recycling, is heavily subsidized. that's why i was providing information about what happens in places where subsidies for recycling are scarce to nonexistent. almost nobody recycles plastic here (except for small programs that are subsidized and do things like recycle polypropylene bottlecaps), and only big operators recycle steel. but paper — specifically the kind of paper that corrugated fiberboard is made of — is abundantly recycled; it's not nearly as remunerative as brass, copper, aluminum, or lead, but it's the bread and butter of the cartoneros because people discard it in much higher volumes i don't think it pays anywhere close to US$75 per tonne though, maybe a tenth of that