Loading…

Recycling Is Not Dead, but we are Certainly Making it Sick

Chaz Miller’s post on the killing of recycling is right on point. As was said many years ago, “I have met the enemy and he is us.”

When communities let their residents put out recycling loaded with contamination; when they don’t commit to education and information and when they get greedy in good markets, they all contribute to the current recycling problem.

The large solid waste companies, and the small companies are just as guilty. The biggest players sold us on single stream. Don’t worry they said, we can sort it all out. They even pushed for 0 separation when markets were really strong. Then, when markets started to crash and when China said enough….we won’t take your garbage any more, they cried foul and started to impose contamination fees.

Of course the contamination fees should have existed all along…but no one wanted to upset their customers.

Ok, the chickens have come home to roost so to speak.

We must now recycle right, recycle those things for which there are markets…and in the long run, just make less stuff to deal with.

Read the full article:
Who Killed Recycling?

Leave a Reply