Recycling Goes from Boom to Bust

The market is just not there anymore...

From Yahoo

"The market is just not there anymore," Steenstra said.

Just months after riding an incredible high, the recycling market has tanked almost in lockstep with the global economic meltdown. As consumer demand for autos, appliances and new homes dropped, so did the steel and pulp mills' demand for scrap, paper and other recyclables.

Cardboard that sold for about $135 a ton in September is now going for $35 a ton. Plastic bottles have fallen from 25 cents to 2 cents a pound. Aluminum cans dropped nearly half to about 40 cents a pound, and scrap metal tumbled from $525 a gross ton to about $100.

It's getting more difficult to find buyers in some markets, Steenstra said. Read the entire article here...

Comments

[Matty Byloos]

Does recycling have to come down to monetary profit to be of some value to us?

[kevin.eb]

São Paulo, to verify their social, economic, sanitary, and environmental impacts in a sustainability perspective. Methods: Bibliographical and data research; structured interviews with representatives of 39 municipalities. Analysis of factors responsible for program continuity was undertaken. Results: Among 39 municipalities, 23 (59%) develop official recycling programs, 19 in partnership with scavenger associations. Indicators analysed showed that the programs resulted in social, and economic gains for scavengers, increased social capital and contributed to reduce waste destined to landfills. However, there are competition factors that have been threatening the continuity of those programs.
The aim of this research was to evaluate waste recycling programs in partnership with scavenger associations, in Metropolitan São Paulo, to verify their social, economic, sanitary and environmental impacts in a sustainability perspective.

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[Jeff9]

Even better than recycling; Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time...yes! Get serious and add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. Available at www.bathroomsprayers.com with these you won't even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! It's cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You'll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. And after using one of these you won't know how you lasted all those years with wadded up handfuls of toilet paper. Now we're talking green and helping the environment without any pain. As for water use a drought is always a concern and must be dealt with prudently but please remember that in the big picture the industrial water users always far exceed the water use of household users and in the case of toilet paper manufacture it is huge. The pollution and significant power use from that manufacturing process also contributes to global warming so switching to a hand bidet sprayer and lowering your toilet paper use is very green in multiple ways. Blog; http://community.greenhangout.com/_Dont-Say-It-Spray-It/blog/259546/82268.html

[SolarNerd]

With the recent fall in the economy I think that this should be expected. The cost of just about everything is dropping like a stone so what some call garbage (recycling) is at the bottom of the chain.
Conversely solar panels are becoming increasingly less expensive so I am not sure which I prefer. There is no doubt in my mind that, at least I, should continue recycling but an incentive would be nice.
I have always wondered about how much yelling it would take for disposal companies to come up with a way to pay those that split up their goods to be recycled and set out for pick up. I mean we already do this whether we are getting paid to or not but I would then be happy to give them my bottles and cans, clean and separated instead of taking them to a facility where I barely pay for my gas in taking it there if they brought down my disposal price.