Although people might be consuming less, the demand for recyclables is crashing, so it’s all piling up…
The economic downturn has decimated the market for recycled materials like cardboard, plastic, newspaper and metals. Across the country, this junk is accumulating by the ton in the yards and warehouses of recycling contractors, which are unable to find buyers or are unwilling to sell at rock-bottom prices. Ordinarily the material would be turned into products like car parts, book covers and boxes for electronics. But with the slump in the scrap market, a trickle is starting to head for landfills instead of a second life.
Have recycle programs stopped in your area?
6 thoughts on “Back at junk value, recyclables are piling up….”
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Wendy and I just did a little story on a local scrapper whose market has collapsed since summer 2008. Our town is more and didn’t have a recycling program until recently. I imagine that will end if the value of waste materials continues to fail.
http://blog.holyscraphotsprings.com/2008/12/scrapper.html
Heard a guy on NPR say how Recycling is a sham put on by the industries that produce the waste. Instead of doing re-usable containers and having to pay for washing and re-using, they moved to disposable and have pushed recycling onto us. Weird to think of, eh?
Plastic is not recyclable. Not in a good way, at least. Plastic can be ‘recycled’ once and only once. After that, they are landfill fodder.
These recycling places need to exist solely on contract with product makers (HP, Apple, Coca-cola, New York Times, etc). Anyone that makes something should be responsible for their products from beginning to end. They sell it but they also take it back when it’s broken/dead. The industry would instantly begin making their products out of reusable pieces in order to cut costs.