

Glass, aluminum, cardboard—where does it all go? The answer isn’t clear. The global market for recyclables is crashing. Now communities must choose whether they’ll continue recycling—or send bottles, cans, and plastics to the landfill instead.
Recycling was once a moneymaker for cities. Processing plants paid for certain kinds of trash. The plants would turn around and sell those squished boxes and empty jugs to companies that would make everything from clothing to countertops from recycled materials.
Now “there’s no market,” says Ben Harvey, president of a sorting facility in Massachusetts. Harvey claims 75 percent of what goes through his plant is worth nothing—or less than nothing. Huh? Yep, some companies must pay to unload what’s collected as “recycling.”
“A year ago, a bale of mixed paper was worth about $100 per ton; today we have to pay about $15 to get rid of it,” says Richard Coupland, a recycling company vice president. “Smaller recycling companies aren’t able to stay in business,” he adds.
The problem stems mostly from a policy shift by the world’s leading recyclables buyer, China. This year, the country passed an anti-pollution program. China won’t take waste paper, metals, or plastic unless it’s 99.5 percent pure. U.S. recycling processors can’t reach that standard. They churn out bales of paper or plastic that are, at best, 97 percent free of contaminants such as foam cups and food waste.
Sloppy recycling is another part of the problem. In recycling’s early days, people washed bottles and cans. They sorted paper, plastic, glass, and metal into separate bins. Now there’s “single-stream” recycling. Everything gets tossed into one bin. Customers like single-stream. But too often, items don’t ever get separated. Plastic bags tangle machinery or taint bales of paper. Spilled ketchup and greasy pizza boxes turn otherwise marketable material into garbage.
Non-recyclables like garden hoses and picnic coolers end up in the mix too. Workers have to separate those items and truck them to a landfill. The extra work adds to overall costs.
In some places, recycling has become so expensive that plants must shut down completely. That leaves communities no choice but to dump or burn recyclables.
What’s the solution? Some companies hope to educate citizens about what belongs in the recycling bin. But going forward, cities will probably need to pay for the cost of collecting and sorting recyclables. That means more taxes from citizens. Coupland says, “This is the new normal. The model no longer funds itself.”
I'm big on protecting the
I'm big on protecting the environment, so this is a bit of a bummer for me. One time I read an article on how long it takes stuff to deteriorate in a landfill, and it was crazy. I think it was a plastic bag that takes, like, 50 years to deteriorate!
2nd Coment
That is sad! I hope recycling becomes more valuable.
EDIT
*Comment, Coment - I did it again!!! argh....
Wow!!! that's a lot of trash!
Wow!!! that's a lot of trash!!
in geting a wally vibe here
WALLYYYYY
recycle
I hope something is done. I like recycling. It's good for the environment.
It's Wall-e not wally. People
It's Wall-e not wally. People should just take their trash and use like a hobby, I use crayons, cans, paperclips, jell-o molds an old vegetable steamer and candles to make colored Easter island heads all day.
THATS ...
Thats just sloppy!Thats too bad.
10th comment
that is a lot of trash
Space
We could just put all the trash in an automated space shuttle made out of recycled materials and send it way out past Pluto & basically out of the solar system. And then recycling is enforced a little more like no putting pizza boxes & junk in the recycle bin so that we can have 99.5 percent clean recycled materials so we can send some of it to China.
Crazy
We need to try better to care for our environment, it's our job to decide what we throw away. It's crazy that people don't care about this stuff. We need to care for earth, and our health.
we can do it, others do
When my family lived in Sweden, they pay a lot of attention to how they recycle. They clean and separate a lot of things I wouldn't have thought. My dad has visited Japan and they are also very detailed a strict about how and what to recycle. Every day a different kind of mateirial is picked up by a different truck. The schedule was hard to learn but people had to do it!
also
Japan and Sweden pays for recycling with taxes, but if Americans knew they had to pay they might do a better job.
15th comment
yay. 15 comments
Wow! Our city just started a
Wow! Our city just started a recycling program test! We're part of it! I was exited because now we get to recycle without having to drive somewhere to drop it all off!
Lena P
Me too!
they should re open the market
they should have never shut down the recycling market down if they re open it it would fix every thing