Plastic Recycling

About a month ago I posted about the religious manner in which we separate plastics for recycling--except they're not necessarily being recycled.  If you didn't like the source of that of the information in that post, maybe you'll believe NPR:

When the council took up the proposed recycling ordinance, the vote was close, but Sanderson won. It was 1980, and Woodbury became a pioneer in recycling. The city claims to be the first in the United States to adopt a mandatory curbside recycling program.

Woodbury even started making money by selling its trash to companies that would recycle it.

That was nearly 40 years ago. More and more, that scenario has flipped: Communities are now having to pay to get rid of their rubbish. It's happening in Woodbury and in places all over the country...

Now plastic has become the biggest thorn in the side of the recycling industry and one for which taxpayers are more often footing the bill...

Materials recovery facilities in the U.S. used to sell a lot of plastic waste to China, which was willing to sort through it. But the nonrecyclables ended up making a huge mess both on land and in the ocean. So last year, China stopped buying most of it, and now materials recovery facilities in the U.S. are left holding the bag, literally...

According to the recycling industry, only about 9% of plastic waste in the U.S. gets recycled every year (and probably less now, since China is no longer importing as much of it).


Meanwhile, it's nearly as cheap for towns like Woodbury just to dump plastic waste into landfills as it is to send plastic waste off for recycling.

But we'll keep paying extra for a second garbage truck to come pick up the so-called recycling bin--because we have to, because someone else has a religious belief that in doing so we're "saving the environment".