Reply #31: I have wondered this myself, [View All]

[necso]

both generally and locally.

The amount of effort required to sort out many recyclables of small worth (especially plastics, where (for some) you may have to find and check that little triangle thingie, and anything which is worth next to nothing) seems disproportionate to the return. (There are also questions of actual reuse, if not reuseablity, of some of these "recycled" materials)

"Skimming off" the easy-to-sort and the high-value seems like the obvious dodge to save money and get maximum return on investment. So I question (much of the) commercial recycling (at least beyond those who take limited, already sorted stuff).

(Whenever profits are involved, you have to figure that some (aspiring) profiteers will try to game the system, and that the profits, not the task at hand, will be concentrated upon. Unfortunately, because these profit-emphasizing types will likely outperform other competitors on the "bottom-line", then it is not unreasonable to expect them to dominate the "marketplace" -- unless everyone is held to the same rigorous standards of task performance, product quality, environmental and worker protections, etc. But that, of course, is exactly what these sleazy profiteers are trying to make sure doesn't happen -- and they will gladly move their businesses out of country -- use illegal, unprotected labor -- or try to change laws -- whatever, whenever they can, to avoid it.)

And one would think that there has to be some government budget line-item (or items) for government based recycling (unless they hide or obscure it, like they regularly do with other useful information these days). The dollar figure (relative and absolute) associated with this line item (or items) should give some rough idea if a serious attempt is being made -- or if a great deal of money is being stolen in the name of it.

Oh, and I scrupulously recycle (for money where I can get it) and compost. I have reasonable confidence that the stuff that I get paid for is being "recycled" (that is, these businesses sell it off, not dump it -- even if it is not actually being reused). And the composting ends with me (or my neighbors), so I am real confident in that. I have my suspicions about the rest though, since it's largely privately done.

But I have done this since college and I have no intention of stopping. And at least they should (well) segregate stuff in the landfills -- which they probably don't. (I can envision our descendants being reduced to mining our landfills.)

Improved technology could be of value here. I saw a program on PBS where they grind up electronics into (somewhat) reusable components. And while this is not necessarily directly applicable to the larger problem, improvements in system and process are there to be made... and should be. (Perhaps some machine (easily) recognizable system can be put in place, like reserving different colors for different plastics, or color bands maybe -- or something, anything, built into the product. And yes, conservation should be used where feasible.)

(Those descendants of ours are probably going to be cursing us at some future date. But it's not like we really care as a people.)

Checking into the exact nature of recycling (including the end use of the "recycled" materials) throughout the country seems like a worthwhile endeavor for activists.

Thrift is a virtue, and creating an endless stream of needlessly "consumed" (and "thrown away") materials runs counter to it.