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If recycling was profitable in the main, someone would be auctioning off old landfill sites to mining companies. If it was predicted to be profitable with new t
by fwlr 3y ago
If recycling was profitable in the main, someone would be auctioning off old landfill sites to mining companies. If it was predicted to be profitable with new technology, someone would be operating landfills while developing that technology. And so on. The fact that it needs consumers to sort recycling for them (in aggregate, this is a large amount of unpaid labor) hints to me that the fundamentals of a profitable enterprise simply don’t exist to be found.
- jhaenchen 3y agoThat is because this waste is the natural excrement of an exploitative economy that lives in disharmony with its own natural ecosystem.
- nonethewiser 3y agoThat’s right. Im not sure how this is controversial. Its a sad reality of plastic.
- maxerickson 3y agoSuch facilities do exist, dirty and/or wet material recovery facility is the search term you'd want. Most material recovery facilities want a clean input stream though. It's not particularly lucrative, but it often makes sense for a landfill operator to do material separation, because the combination of selling the separated material and not using the landfill space makes financial sense. Given that my county landfill is the beneficiary and will either need more tax money or close down and increase my disposal costs, separating the saleable stuff into a clean stream doesn't bother me too much.