Why don't we try something old again?

When I lived in Bellingham WA, 1981 to 1988, you could recycle paper as the Georgia Pacific paper mill in town took paper, metal cans and batteries were recycled by the Western Washington University student body.

Then I moved to Elko NV for 14 years and nothing was recycled as Elko is 290 miles from anywhere and transportation costs killed any plan.

Moving to the Mississippi Delta in 2002 was similar, but about 7 years ago, Greenwood started recycling paper, cardboard, steel and aluminum cans and Type 1 and 2 plastics (pop bottles and milk battles to those who don't know PETE from HDPE) Greenwood is still not making any money recycling, but they spend less per ton recycling than they do at the land fill, so it saves money in some sense. There is still no market for glass (you have to sort by color, and liability insurance is astronomical), or other plastics, but they recently added electronics recycling.

They have 4 pick up points around town, they do weekly curbside pick up, and for businesses, on demand cardboard recycling on site. Greenwood also serves as a sorting station for a half dozen smaller towns in the Delta. (They buy bins and Greenwood picks them up)

Should your part of TX be wavering about recycling, they could do worse than emulate Greenwood. Derek would help them out.

Recycling Center | Greenwood, MS - Official Website

 

We pay an additional $800/yr for trash and recycling service from a second company just to have recycling. Our neighbourhood HOA (grrrrr) tacks on a $350/yr charge for trash service. The company they contract with won't do recycling service on a per-house basis. So the whole neighbourhood goes without recycling. They also won't do it if you try to add it on yourself and pay with a separate account just for recycling. Recycling HAS to be associated with a trash service. I have trash service through the HOA, associate with that. No, can't do that. So I went to an alternate and they too couldn't do recycling without trash. Now I have 4 96-gal containers, 2 for trash, and 2 for recycling. I go through about 1 "kitchen-sized" trash bag per month, but I fill those recycling containers up to the top since they are only collected every other week. It's ridiculous. I have noticed that at least 1 other person in the area has done what I did. I know I was the first here because they had to call me back to see what day the drivers could get to the neighbourhood to add it into their routes. $400/yr for recycling, and $750/yr for 12 kitchen sized bags of rubbish. Everything that can't get recycled, composted, re-used, or donated goes in the trash. It's not much.

I think the 2nd to last paragraph in the article sums it up perfectly.

For one, Western corporate culture often prizes profits and shareholder value over other goals. Even when CEOs know better (a big assumption), an honest discussion of when limiting revenue in pursuit of sustainability is justified would lead to a shareholder revolt.

Profit and greed are #1 around here.

 

More reduce and reuse?

 

If I understand the economics of curbside recycling correctly, everything is a money loser except aluminum cans.

In my old neighborhood, the scrappers would come by at 3am on trash day and take all the cans out of the bins, so they recycling companies cancelled the program.

 

Amazon isn't without their bunny huggers, and I'm sure that they're looking at ways to reduce their plastic use since, in the end, it's going to come down to saving something that to them is even more precious than their planet.
We have neighborhood recycling, and I try to use the Amazon boxes for outgoing mail at work.
Telecommunications uses a tremendous amount of cardboard since we're always mailing circuit packs this place and that, and so for me it works out rather well.
Our circuit pack distribution hubs get a lot of packages from me with the Amazon logo.

Bottle and can deposits have one undeniable benefit that also works for plastic which is reducing roadside litter.
If you throw an aluminum can out of a car window in the Reddest of American states, someone in the ALCPA (Aluminum Can Pickers of America) will catch it before it hits the ground, since the can is worth at least a nickel.
In some US states where plastic bottles are still legal, they have a 5-cent cash value. Unfortunately, there are political aspects of recycling and deposits that would throw this thread into the political septic tank in this forum.

I'm not sure about the whole carbon throughput thing, since that is an exercise in statistics.
In the US for example, the ALCPA patrols the highways and byways in their ubiquitous 4-wheelers looking for lost cans and bottles, and I've read some material that suggests that plastic bottle recycling is marginal at best, although it's probably worth pursuing just to keep them out of landfills.
I've also long thought that since cardboard can only be recycled a few times (it's apparently a fiber thing) that it might be more beneficial to use it as an inert land fill agent and just continue to harvest loblolly pine trees every 8 years and cook them into paper.
I've lived in areas where considerable acreage is devoted to this product, and I cannot help but wonder if there are benefits to wildlife and planet in young-growth forests.

Again...probably fodder for a political food-fight.
The 'old school' take away from me is individual effort and setting an example for those that follow.
I keep a recycle bin in my office that the outside techs in my turf occasionally use....and I use my neighborhood service.
I re-use bags and boxes (more efficient than recycling) where and when I can and I try to ADVOCATE rather than CASTIGATE.

YMMV

 

I've started using cardboard for mulch in the garden.

Those aren't forests. They are tree farms. The owners aren't as worried about weeds in them as a wheat farmer would be, but they are still a monoculture that can only support a limited diversity of wildlife.

 

We use some of our cardboard to start fires in our wood stove.

 

@ monoculture.....
Beats growing cotton or subdivisions, besides....."farm" might be a little generous for most of the leased land in these parts that's devoted to the humble loblolly pine.
I never supposed that they would serve as a substitute for whatever people think of as "old growth" or "natural" forests east of the Rockies but leased pulpwood land is hardly a 'monoculture' given the recent resurgence of medium sized predators that can live nearly nowhere else.
I'm even hearing rumblings of larger predator sightings, although these rumors (wolves, cougars) are probably chemically enhanced.

 

Cougars Officially Declared Extinct in Eastern U.S., Removed from Endangered Species List - Yale E360

While I saw sign of cougars in Washington state, (mostly paw prints over my boot prints, it would follow the opposite direction to see where you had been) I only saw a cougar in the wild once. I had hiked up the Hoh 8 miles to my campsite, and walked back and got my mother's pack. on the way back up to camp I turned a corner and saw it about 10 feet away. (While I was still registering 'brown, tail", it dashed away) I plopped down and waited on my mother, to show her the prints.

 

The problem can be approached from multiple directions.

I suspect robots/AI will make one of the biggest contributions to lessening the problem on the consumption side. Each year they become more able to rapidly and accurately sort out all sorts of metals, plastics, cardboard, etc from garbage.

In our county there is no separate bin for recycling. Our waste service recovers recyclable material from mixed waste.

Since recycling only a few materials is directly profitable to a waste facility, to achieve recycling of nonprofitable products will continue to require incentives/regulation/external financial support.

 

Several have made predictions about 'mining' in old landfills, and this seems plausible.

@ Cougar (the non-human variety)
Mountain lion, puma, cougar, panther are all pretty much the same feline, according to the Googles, and they've been seen more frequently in east and west, one and all.
Since they're fairly high up the food chain, this lends credence to the fact that bio-diversity hasn't been completely eradicated...just yet.

East of the Rockies, they're not quite the jogger threat that they've been in Caly but then we haven't reached population densities found in SoCal......

 

None seen in 80 years is seriously winning at hide and seek. As I mentioned, I saw plenty of signs I was walking with cougars over the years, even though I only met one once.

 

We are getting a pickup truck load of "farm waste" for our garden.

 

I don't recall a time we didn't recycle, and it's getting better all the time. We've gone from one little blue bin and a garbage can, ages ago, to three big bins. 'Green waste' includes kitchen compost and all manner of yard clippings, and gets picked up once a week all year round. It's usually stuffed. The blue-lidded bin gets most of the recyclables except glass, which we take a few blocks to a main depot. It's usually stuffed too, especially when I add a bag of shredded paper. The local recycling depot has additional spots for just about everything, including glass, batteries, plastic bags, paint, appliances....our 'garbage' is next to nothing, and is rarely put out for collection on the biweekly schedule.

And of course there are deposits for containers, most of which are recycled by 'binners' who eke out a bare living from the waste of others.

I recall being one of those predicting that our current garbage dumps will become resource mines - I might live long enough to see that, and I might not. I've told the wife to just add my body to the compost bin, but I think that's one of the banned items.

 

It;s reuse, repurpose then recycle.

 

South Australia has been doing this for years: there's a 10-cent deposit on bottles and cans.

New South Wales - where I live - is reintroducing it this year. I think it's a very good thing. And the kids are excited because they'll be able to make some money out of Daddy's Diet Coke habit.